


Consonance

by Donda



Series: Mend [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Animal Death, Corpses, Gen, Ghosts in Max's Head, Implied Cannibalism, Max and Furiosa Bonding, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Battles, Road Warriors, Wasteland surgery, graphic depictions of injuries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 30,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5013283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max and Furiosa ride away from the Citadel, side by side. They don't know where they're going. Just that they're looking for something.</p><p>This is shameless Max and Furiosa bonding. And being Road Warriors together, trying to find whatever it is Max has been searching for. Something to help him heal.</p><p>(Not strictly necessary to have read part one of this series if you don't want to. This is a continuation, but it can stand on its own, too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Setting Out

Max has been searching for something out there. He doesn't seem to know what, and Furiosa senses that at this point, he's given up hope of ever finding it. He's roaming out of habit now, because he knows no other life. He was welcomed when he returned to the Citadel, and he could have had a home there. But it wasn't what he wanted. Or maybe it was, but at this point, it just isn't the kind of life he can live.  
  
Max does just want to go home. But he's long since forgotten what a home actually is. For so long, his only home has been his Interceptor, or even just the Wasteland. Always on the move, never settling down.  
  
In a way, Furiosa is glad Max wouldn't call Citadel home. Sticking around the Citadel wasn't in her cards, either. She and Max are of the same ilk, both road warriors ill-suited to a peaceful lifestyle. Even when they first met, those four days on the Fury Road, she had come to trust him a great deal. They had exchanged very few words, but their actions spoke volumes to each other. In his subsequent visits to the Citadel over the following few years, they had gradually come to know each other even better.  
  
Max doesn't know what he's searching for out there, but Furiosa thinks she does. He had said it himself when he stopped them from disappearing into the Salt. _Redemption. Together._  
  
Max had said later he didn't think redemption was what he had actually needed. He had tried that when he helped free the Citadel, and the weight hadn't lifted off his mind. But Furiosa thinks maybe he's just given up too soon. It's not that the redemption they had found together wasn't what he needed, it's that it simply wasn't enough. He had told her he's haunted by the ghosts in his mind. He'd failed them, he said. But he hadn't said what actually happened. He hadn't told her how many people he felt he had failed, or how many times he had failed. Regardless, Furiosa suspects the regrets run deep and stem from a lifetime of horrors. It's going to take more than one act of redemption to wipe all of that away. Maybe nothing will wipe it away. But they won't know if they don't try.  
  
As they ride away from the Citadel side by side, neither knows where they're going. It doesn't matter where they're going. The journey is the destination.  
  
Furiosa would head east, as she has done so many times before, but there's nothing left to go to there. Instead, she follows Max's lead.  
  
Riding next to him, Furiosa's truck dwarfs Max's interceptor. While Max's car stands as a relatively unblemished relic of the time before, built for speed, maneuverability, and little else, Furiosa's vehicle is a monster built strictly for defense and survival in the Wasteland. It was once a flatbed military canvas truck, but now, rusted throughout and ground to the bare minimum, painted black, it looms as a vehicle suited to this mad world. It carries a shell of haphazard metal plates welded in an arch over the bed, which is stuffed full of supplies and guarded in the back by a barred metal door. The engine cover is missing, making room for the oversized engine shoved into the front. Sharp pieces of metal protect the back and sides, plates of metal guard the tires, the grill is a maw of jagged teeth, and a plow adorns the front, violently spiked along the bottom edge. It is not unlike her old War Rig (if quite a bit smaller), and even carries the same skeletal arm painted on the driver's door. She calls the beast Aegis, an ancient word she learned from Miss Giddy what feels like a lifetime ago.  
  


* * *

  
They don't talk much the fist few nights of their journey. No need to. Max was never very talkative to begin with, anyway. They park their vehicles next to each other, and Max stretches out a ratty blanket on the ground next to his Interceptor, another folded nearby, feeble protection from the cold night. At first, Furiosa tries to sleep in Aegis, in the small bit of floorspace between their stacks of supplies. It offers plenty of protection from wind and the cold of the night, its metal shell holding the warmth of the day for hours. It's safe. Strategic. But Max always sleeps on the ground next to his driver's door, and after a couple nights Furiosa joins him, laying her own blanket not far from his. She's not quite sure why. It just feels better.  
  
Max is more relaxed out here. She had never realized how truly on-edge he always was at the Citadel. She had only ever known him among others. Seeing him now in his own element is completely different. He's calmer, more collected, less jumpy. But his ghosts seem to get to him more out here. She catches him shaking his head sometimes, or swiping his hand by his ear as if chasing off an annoyance. She doesn't know how well he slept at the Citadel (she was rarely around him when he actually did go to sleep), but he doesn't sleep well out here. He may not have liked being around people, but they still seemed to have done him some good.  
  
They settle into a comfortable routine at the end of every day. As night falls, they stop and set up their simple camp. Furiosa digs food for them out of the back of her truck, and Max starts up a small fire if they deem it's safe. They eat in silence, and then, on the occasions that they're not sure about this area, they agree on watch shifts.  
  
Many nights they don't feel the need to keep watch. Haven't seen another human being in too long, nothing even remotely nearby, or Max knows this area and feels relatively secure here. Furiosa is always a little on guard, but she reminds herself that Max must have slept plenty of nights out here without a watch, and survived just fine. Sometimes she keeps watch anyway.  
  
Furiosa listens to Max's quiet breathing as she sits atop Aegis, scanning the desert around her for any hint of approach. She's starting to get used to Max waking up frequently, jolting as if he's been struck, or lashing out as if defending himself from whatever assails him. (She's also learned not to put her own sleeping blanket within arm's reach of his.)  
  
Tonight is one of those nights. She hears his even breathing hitch and break with a quiet, startled noise, then he lays there, breathing heavily for a moment. She doesn't look around at him. She hears him move across the sand, then climb up the side of the cab to the roof. The truck rocks slightly as he moves across its back and sits down next to her.  
  
She wonders what he sees that scares him so badly. He's always uncomfortable for a while after he wakes up from a nightmare. But she doesn't ask him. He'll tell her if he wants to.  
  
Max sits a long while, staring out at the horizon, then fumbles for a pocket. He unfolds a small piece of cloth and lays it out on his knee. Furiosa moves closer, recognizing it as the map he had used when he turned them back from the Salt. Joe's logo stands as the clearest and largest symbol on the map, initially drawn in blood as a warning to himself to never, ever go near. He had lost a chunk of his life to that place. The rest of the map is dots and various lines and arrows that Furiosa can't quite make sense of. She thinks she can pick out the Bullet Farm and Gas Town, but most of the markings have meaning that only Max knows.  
  
He looks over at her as she leans in, trying to decipher the symbols. He places a finger on the map (Furiosa assumes that's where they are) and looks to her again, as if asking her opinion.  
  
"What about here?" she asks after a moment, indicating a large blank space near his finger. Uncharted territory. Max considers it.  
  
They don't need any supplies for a long while yet. Aegis still carries enough food, water and guzzoline for many days to come, and Max carries a bit more in the back of his Interceptor. If they're going to venture into unknown territory, now's as good a time as any.  
  
He dips his head to the side briefly, a gesture Furiosa takes as _sure, why not?_ He starts to fold the map back up, but Furiosa stills his hands. She tugs it gently from him and lays it across her own knees, leaning over it to see its faint lines in the moonlight. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to her, but she decides not to criticize him his map-making skill. He understands it, and that's all that really matters. (She has a grim feeling she knows what the winding trail of arrows that end near the Citadel mean, however.) Giving up on interpreting his unknown symbols and lines, she folds the map carefully and hands it back to him. It disappears back into a pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you're all aware, the update schedule of this fic is going to be a bit slower than it was for Convalescence. Convalescence came to me pretty easily, but this one I've been really struggling with. Your support means a lot to me, though, so I'll do my best to keep powering through!


	2. Unknown

The next morning, they venture into the unknown. Not that it's very different from the land they've been driving through. But Furiosa and Max are on equal footing, neither one knowing what they may encounter out here. (Mostly, though, it's a whole lot of nothing.)  
  
They drive at a relatively leisurely pace. No need to waste guzzoline when they've got nowhere important to be. Furiosa looks over at Max after she spots the dust clouds in her side mirror. He's seen it, too. Other vehicles, and they seem to be heading their direction, drawing close. Fight or flight? Flight, his eyes say, flicking between her and the emptiness ahead of them. No need to get into a fight if you don't have to. Furiosa agrees.  
  
"Fang it!" she yells out her window to him. And Max does.  
  
To be fair, Furiosa does, too. But Aegis is a heavy thing, and despite its custom engine, fanging it is not exactly its strong suit. Dust blows across her windscreen and through the cab as the Interceptor bursts ahead, leaving her far behind. She shakes her head, smiling. "Oh, Fool."  
  
Max didn't actually mean to leave her in the dust, and doesn't realize at first that she's not only no longer beside him, but not even right behind him. He cranes his neck out the window as his foot falters on the gas pedal, looking for her truck. He doesn't see her at first, lost in his dust cloud, until she blows right past him. Aegis is relatively slow to pick up speed, but once it has, it is a thing to be reckoned with. Max has to rush to get back up to speed with her.  
  
Their pursuers eventually drop off, the dust clouds disappearing into the distance behind them. They ride on.  
  
They will definitely be keeping watch tonight. Max doesn't light a fire. It would attract too much attention. He takes first watch, and Furiosa lays down between the vehicles to get a few hours of sleep. She wakes to the sound of distant motors, and sees Max standing atop Aegis, his muscles tensed, ready to spring into action. Furiosa quietly goes to retrieve a few extra guns, but it's unnecessary in the end. The raiders don't find their camp, and the sound of motors die in the distance. The duration of Furiosa's watch is quiet.  
  
She climbs down her cab in the morning and finds Max already awake, silently poking some new symbol into his map with a needle and his own blood. She shakes her head faintly. She could have gotten him some ink from the Citadel before they left, had she known this was standard for him. She brings them a jug of water and the last of their fresh fruit supply for their morning meal before they head out.  
  
They've obviously wandered into someone's territory, because not long after they set out for the morning, raiders find them again. Cars burst from an outcropping of rocks they pass by, falling in beside them, too close to escape. Max curses to himself. They should have just turned around and gone back to known territory after yesterday's and last night's events. He dodges his car to the side as one swings in beside him rapidly. He's trapped between the raider car and Aegis, not a good place to be. A bullet rings off the frame of his car, and Max, gun already in hand, shoots back.  
  
Furiosa swerves away from him suddenly, smashing Aegis' spiked side into a car beside her. Max hits the brakes for a brief moment, dodges around to the other side of the car that was on his left, and hits the gas, coming up beside it again. He reaches out his window as he approaches, and nearly point-blank loads a few bullets into the driver. The raider car drops off behind him. One down, three to go. He glances over his shoulder to see the mangled remains of one of the others roll away behind Furiosa's truck. Make that two.  
  
No time to relax. The two remaining cars come up behind him, a shooter on the back of one putting dents into his newly-repaired Interceptor. Max grumbles out a curse and smashes his foot on the gas pedal, powering ahead to try to coax them into Furiosa's line of sight. In his mirror, he sees her take out the shooter on the back, but yank her arm back into the truck as a man in the second car sends a spray of bullets her way. She makes a sharp turn, steering her open window away from the onslaught, then slams on the brakes as they swing around to follow her. One smashes into the back of the truck, but not quite hard enough to stop its pursuit. Max circles around, shooting out of his window as he surges toward them. He takes out the tire on one car, watches it fishtail and fall behind them, then focuses his attention on the last car remaining. It's swinging around the far side of Aegis, a gun out the window. Max surges ahead on Furiosa's other side, reaching behind the seat to grab one of the explosives the War Boys use to tip their thundersticks. He waves the device out his window as he passes Furiosa, glances at her for acknowledgment, then rushes ahead and swerves to her other side. He tosses the explosive up and behind his car, and she immediately swerves away as the raider car explodes beside her.  
  
But it's not over. Furiosa yells something to Max that he can't quite make out, but he glances back past the flaming remains of the raider car to see the one with the shot-out tire gaining on them, swerving slightly but not halting. Not far behind it comes the car he had taken out first by shooting its driver. He grumbles to himself, and drops back to engage. As they draw closer, Furiosa swings around and barrels straight toward them, surprising Max enough to make him falter. The first car falls victim to the plow on the front of Aegis, bits of it flying in all directions, but the second one swerves out of her way just in time.  
  
It heads straight for Max, and he turns quickly away from their collision course. The car falls in beside him. He ducks and almost loses control as the raider fires at him, but he reaches up, firing blindly until he hears a yell. He looks up to see the car lose control and roll away. Max turns and approaches. Shooting the driver hadn't kept this one down last time, but it looks like there is only one raider in it this time. He puts a few bullets through the windshield just to be sure.  
  
It takes him a while to come down from the adrenaline high. He doesn't often get into road battles like this. His tactic, if he can help it, is usually to run. Don't get involved. Furiosa pulls up beside the Interceptor and looks him over, then gets out, gun aimed at the raider car as she approaches. She finds its only occupant dead, tosses him out of the seat, and begins searching the car for things they can use. The other three cars are pretty well destroyed, but they can at least salvage stuff from this one.  
  
They hurriedly siphon out the guzzoline, take most of the items they find inside the car (good for trading if nothing else), but decide not to take the time to scrap the thing for parts. neither wants to tempt fate and risk backup showing up.  
  
They discuss briefly, and decide to continue forward instead of turning back. The raiders' territory probably isn't that large. Continuing on should be the quickest way to get through it.  


* * *

  
  
That night, Max elaborates the point he had marked on his map that morning. Another place to avoid, if possible.  
  
"You want to use something other than your own blood?" Furiosa finally asks, and it comes out a little more exasperated than she meant it.  
  
He looks up at her and blinks. He looks down at his map and the bloodied spot on his hand. "It's fine." And he goes back to what he was doing. Furiosa almost laughs.  
  
"If you get an infection from that, I'm not helping you."  
  
"Haven't yet."  
  
She shakes her head, but sits down across from him and watches. She shivers in the cold night air.  
  
Furiosa isn't quite used to life constantly on the move. While she was at the Citadel, she always liked doing runs and missions rather than working within the Citadel, and while Joe was alive, she always dreamed about escaping and driving far, far away. It's not that this life isn't what she wanted, but it takes some getting used to. She misses people sometimes.  
  
For Max's part, he isn't used to being with someone else out here. He spent a lot of time at the Citadel over the past few years, got used to being around people to some degree, but he always needed to leave and decompress.  
  
Out here, he's always been alone. Sometimes, it seems he somehow forgets that Furiosa is with him, and she catches him mumbling to himself in nonsensical, repeated sentences. He always jumps when she approaches or speaks when he's talking to himself. When she asks, he won't tell her why he does it.  
  
He's grateful for her company, though. She keeps him grounded, helps chase the dead away. It's quieter in his head when she's around.


	3. Not as Planned

Furiosa's first attempt to get Max to help people in need isn't particularly successful. Not that she can't get him to help - he does, with a bit of grumbling - but it doesn't end well.  
  
Still cruising through unknown lands after days of seeing nothing, they spot smoke rising in the distance. Max's instinct is to steer clear, but Furiosa is heading straight for it. He follows reluctantly. She stops a safe distance away from it, at least, and peers through her binoculars. Max stands next to the Interceptor, waiting for her evaluation.   
  
"Gas fire," she comments, not looking away from her binocs. She recognizes those flames, that smoke.  
  
Max, ever the habitual scavenger, perks up slightly. They could always use more fuel, assuming it's not all burning up. But the reason for the gas fire?  
  
"I see vehicles," Furiosa continues. "Can't tell what's going on, though…" She watches for another moment, then dives back into her cab. Max jumps. She emerges quickly with her rifle, scrambles atop Aegis' cab, and aims at the spectacle in front of them, peering through the scope. One shot. Two. Three. Max sees a couple vehicles go rushing away from the scene. Furiosa's rifle follows them, but they disappear quickly over the crest of a hill and she curses under her breath, lowering the rifle.  
  
"Come on." She swings back into the cab and starts the engine. Max heaves a sigh and follows.  
  
They find three dead marauders and a sobbing child, with a woman crawling rapidly over to him to wrap in her protective arms. Furiosa pulls out a gun, holding it level. "Someone else," she murmurs as Max comes up beside her. They go opposite ways around the burning vehicle (the gas tank had already exploded, the remains of the fuel now burning away). Both find the cowering man at the same time, his hands pressed to his leg. Furiosa glances at Max, then holsters her gun, knowing he'll watch her back. She approaches the man.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
He looks at her, wide-eyed, and she holds her hands up, trying not to look threatening. He glances at Max, who makes no effort to look non-threatening.  
  
"They just… attacked. We were on our way to Rockmill. They came out of nowhere."  
  
Furiosa sighs. Just an unaware family, unprepared for the dangers of the road. Max keeps watch, not trusting that the marauders will stay away. Furiosa helps the man wrap his leg, then goes to check briefly on the woman and child. All three are burned and scraped up (or shot, in the man's case), but it's nothing immediately life-threatening. She goes to talk to Max.  
  
"Not our problem," Max says gruffly before she even gets a chance to speak. Surviving is hard enough. You can't just go helping everybody you meet out here.  
  
Furiosa just raises her eyebrows at him. "So you want to just leave them here to die?"  
  
Max looks a little guilty, so Furiosa powers ahead. "You can fit one. I'll take the other two. We take them to this Rockmill. Maybe do some trading while we're there."  
  
Max's shoulders sag a bit, but he nods. Leaving them now would make him no better than the marauders who attacked them. Furiosa gives him a nod and a small, reassuring smile. He's on board. He'll do his part.  
  
They hurry to leave before the marauders come back with reinforcements. Furiosa helps the woman and child, Des and Coden, into the passenger seat of Aegis, and Max takes the wounded man in his car (he doesn't ask his name).  
  
It's late in the day, but they make it as far as they can, driving part way into the night, trying to put as much distance between them and the marauders as possible. The man talks amiably to Max, only slightly put-off when he finds it to be a rather one-sided conversation. Max does acknowledge him, grunting and giving a few words in response here and there, but generally refuses to answer most of his well-meant questions about Max himself. Furiosa, on the other hand, manages to carry on a decent conversation with Des. She'll admit she finds it kind of nice to actually talk to somebody.  
  
They've seen no sign of pursuit, and eventually deem it safe to stop and set up camp, sharing the few blankets they have with the family.  
  
Furiosa takes the first watch, and Max tries to get some sleep. He awakes to images of blood and horror. Images of the family the've picked up dead. Images of their ghostly faces blaming him. He's up in an instant, reaching for his gun, and looks to Furiosa. She looks unperturbed, still scanning their surroundings. Everything is quiet. It was just a dream. Even so, he can't help but feel a sense of foreboding.  
  
He looks back up at Furiosa sitting on the back of her truck, figuring he might as well join her. This time Glory is there, standing beside Furiosa, staring at him with a piercing gaze that makes him shrink back. The girl's hand lifts, pointing behind him, and he spins on reflex, a moment before Furiosa jumps to her feet. She slides down the side of the truck quickly, and something clangs off its metal shell.  
  
The family awakes, bewildered.  
  
"Get in the car!" Max jabs a finger at the Interceptor. A fight is inevitable, and he doesn't want them getting in the way.  
  
Marauders burst from behind a nearby dune. Max presses himself against the Interceptor as a crossbow arrow goes flying by his head. He aims over the roof, shooting at the dark figures that approach quickly. Furiosa is suddenly beside him, trying to stop the attack before it becomes a hand-to-hand battle.  
  
They shoot down three of them before the first one reaches them. Des shoves her child into the Interceptor and starts to scramble in herself, her husband a few steps behind her, limping badly. More marauders come around from behind Aegis, unseen. It's not until Des' husband yells that Max and Furiosa turn. A marauder has grabbed the man, and quickly puts a knife to his throat.  
  
"Back off! These ones are ours!" The marauder yells as Max starts toward him. Max stops short. Furiosa spins back to the Interceptor as she hears the passenger door open and Coden cry out. The first wave of marauders has reached them, and one man is yanking the child out by his wrist. Furiosa jumps for the open driver's side and shoots through the car, putting a bullet through the marauder's head. Another suddenly grabs her from behind and pulls her back. Max is occupied with another, as the one who had grabbed the father tries to drag him off. They are being attacked from all sides, with arrows still flying from the top of the nearby dune.   
  
"Ah, just kill that one," Max hears one of the marauders say. "He's already broken. No good to us."  
  
A scream ends in a gurgle and Max's vision tunnels in as he watches the man fall to the ground, his throat cut. This is it. He's failed again. It's his fault.  
  
Something in Max snaps.  
  
Furiosa hears a feral yell, and glances up to see Max punch out the marauder nearest him with brutal force. She struggles with the one attacking her, and when she finally manages to end him with a bullet, she catches sight of Max violently bludgeoning another with a stolen club. The two remaining marauders close in on him quickly. She knows Des and Coden are struggling with the last marauder left from the first wave of the attack, but she sees the father laying motionless on the ground, and for a moment can't tear her eyes away from Max's frenzied rampage. She's seen him fight before, and this is not the Max she knows.  
  
Her gut response is to jump in to aid Max's fight as the two marauders attack him simultaneously, but Des screams for help, and Furiosa turns back toward her. She can only trust that Max can handle his two opponents. She can't engage in his fight and risk losing what's left of the family they decided to help. She rounds the Interceptor, trying not to look back as she hears Max yell again.  
  
The marauder is dragging away the mother, her child clinging to her as if for dear life. He doesn't see Furiosa coming until she's nearly upon him. He lets go of Des and pulls a gun on Furiosa, but she's already committed to her path, barreling straight toward him. She manages to catch his arm a moment before he can shoot, redirecting his aim away from her. He strikes at her with his other hand, and she retaliates by smashing her metal arm into the elbow of the arm she grips, bending it back with a sickening crack. He fights on, but it doesn't take her much longer to finish him off.  
  
She steps away from the battle, her ribs aching and her cheek stinging from blows sustained. The shooters on the other side of the dune yell to retreat, and she sees them jump up and run. Behind the Interceptor, Max lets out a growl, and is instantly scrambling after them.  
  
"Max!" She yells as he passes her, but he acts as if he doesn't hear her. What is he doing? He doesn't typically get into fights he doesn't have to. She takes off after him, to stop him or back him up, whichever becomes necessary.  
  
Max crests the top of the dune as the marauders hurry over the next one. He's too late, too far behind to catch up, but he continues running after them anyway, right up until Furiosa tackles him to the ground. He rolls, throwing her off, and raises the club still clutched in his fist, ready to fight.  
  
She deflects the hastily-swung weapon and grips his wrist, holding it back "Max! It's me!"  
  
Max stops instantly, the club still raised. He looks at her through a fog of confusion, then clamps his eyes shut, shakes his head, and collapses back into the sand, letting the club fall from his hand.  
  
She doesn't ask what that was about. She doesn't even speak. She has a feeling she's just seen him at his worst. His madness had taken him and revenge had become the only way he knew how to react. She waits to see if he's okay, her stance defensive just in case. He doesn't move. Doesn't look at her. Finally, he lifts himself up and walks past her, toward their camp. Sand sticks to the back of his head where blood runs freely from a large gash, and he limps more than usual.  
  
The sight that meets Furiosa as she comes around the Interceptor back in their camp isn't pretty. Three of the dead marauders are mangled and bloody, their heads smashed in and a few bones twisted at unnatural angles. She stops dead at the sight. To be honest, she's seen sights as bad, but certainly not by Max's hand. The brutality of it turns her stomach.  
  
In the middle of it all, Des crouches over her dead husband, sobbing uncontrollably. Max stops dead in his tracks as the woman turns and starts to yell at them.  
  
"You said you'd help us! You let him die!"  
  
Max stumbles backward with a startled noise, falls, and ends up sitting in the dirt, staring wide-eyed. It's not supposed to be this way. Those are words for his ghosts to say. He glances at Furiosa. She's carefully moving to help the woman. Those words are not just in his head.   
  
His ghosts he can deal with. They torment him, scream at him, make him feel like his head is going to split, but he knows on some level that they're not real. But this? A living person with the same accusations as all those who have died because of him? He's frozen in terror. He wants to escape, but his body won't move.  
  
Furiosa is trying to calm Des, but doesn't quite know what to do. A life spent largely among War Boys didn't exactly qualify her for this. (And she feels this situation is partially her fault, too. That doesn't make this any easier.) She knows the pain of losing someone loved, but doesn't know what to do about it, doesn't know what to say. She settles for sitting by, trying to be comforting while Des cries herself out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the Max Part Two comic (yeah, yeah, I know some people like to pretend the comics don't exist, but I found this bit intriguing):  
> "Vengeance can never balance out loss… Nor can it bring the dead back to life. There is no peace to be had there -- only pain… and madness. So it was with Max Rockatansky, the road warrior. Trapped in a never-ending cycle of loss and revenge… Unable to escape the mistakes of his own history."


	4. Haunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Squick warning: medical stuff in this chapter. Mostly just some blood and a few stitches.

They need to move, need to get out of here. Furiosa tries to get them going, but the others have shut down. Des refuses to leave her husband. He needs a proper burial, she says, and insists that this is not the place for it. She won't leave him here. Furiosa promises to take his body with them, but Des won't let her touch him.  
  
Max won't even go near the camp now. He skirts the edges, looking like he might bolt at any moment, then disappears over a dune. Furiosa is left to drag the dead marauders away herself. When the work is done and she's calmed her frustration a little, she goes to find Max, bringing their medical supplies with her.  
  
He's sitting on the slope of a dune, staring into the distance, in the direction the marauders had disappeared. Furiosa says his name as she approaches, not wanting to startle him. He's turned on her with a gun several times in the past, and she's realized he doesn't do well with people walking up behind him. Max just shakes his head in a jerky motion, as if chasing away one of the voices in his head.  
  
"Max, it's okay." It's really not okay. Nothing about what just happened is okay. But she wants to differentiate herself from his accusing dead. Wants him to believe that maybe things will be okay. He sits motionless.  
  
"I'm going to look at your head wound, alright?"  
  
Still no response. She sits down behind him and inspects the damage. Half-clotted blood is caked with sand in his hair. It has run down the back of his neck, soaking into his shirt. She can't make out the actual wound for all the mess around it. She sets down the bowl of water she had brought with her, wets a cloth and starts to clean him up, wringing the dirty, bloody water out into the sand.  
  
She manages to clean the wound with only a little bit of growling and complaining from Max. It starts to bleed again as she uncovers it.  
  
"You're going to need stitches."  
  
"Hm."  
  
She's not sure he's quite with her. But she can't just let him continue bleeding like this. She finds what she needs in their medical bag, disinfects the wound (bringing a new round of cursing from Max), threads the needle, then lays her metal hand on his shoulder. "Don't move."  
  
He settles, hunched, his body tensed. She tires to close the wound with as few stitches as possible, making the edges meet a bit messily, but at least the bleeding slows.  
  
Max tries to brush her off as she starts to bandage it. He starts to stand up, but she pushes him back into the sand.  
  
"Sit down. I'm not letting you get it infected out here." She continues wrapping. Max grunts and sits still.  
  
He makes no move to get up after she finishes. They sit in silence for a minute.  
  
"Max. We need to go. It's not safe here."  
  
"Can't… Can't go back there."  
  
"I need you to."  
  
He finally turns to look at her, his brow creased.  
  
Her eyes implore him. "I'm sorry it happened this way. But we have to keep going."  
  
He closes his eyes for a moment, working through something in his head, then nods, resigned, and slowly pulls himself to his feet. She's right. You can't just stop. Not out here. They crest the dune and head back to the vehicles. His look is a mixture of fear and apology when he meets the now stony-faced woman and her quietly crying son.  
  
Furiosa talks to the woman in a hushed voice. Max's attention zeroes in on the dead body laying at their feet.   
  
His fault.  
  
He doesn't know what they were talking about, wasn't listening, but suddenly Furiosa is asking for his help, sounding like she's just asked him a couple times already. She starts to pick up the man's body. Max hesitates, but moves in and lifts. He tries not to look as they carry him to the back of Aegis.  
  
 _"You let me die!"_  
  
Max flinches, almost drops the man. He makes the mistake of looking toward him. His eyes are open, staring straight at Max, and he mouths the words again. _"You let me die!"_  
  
Max jumps back with a startled noise, dropping the man's legs. He stands still, his eyes clamped shut, his breathing heavy.  
  
"Max," Furiosa says softly, trying to bring him out of it, "it's not real."  
  
"I know," he croaks. But it doesn't make it any less terrifying.  
  
He eventually calms himself, taking a deep breath, and they hoist the body into the back of Furiosa's truck. He's glad, at least, that they're not putting him back in the Interceptor. They lock the cage door and go to leave. The woman and child go with Furiosa again, for which Max is also glad. He doesn't think he could handle facing her in an enclosed space.  
  
They continue toward Rockmill and reach it by mid-morning. It's a respectably-sized town at the foot of a large escarpment. Many of the buildings look like mere extensions of the cliff, others are carved directly into the rock face. A collection of other haphazard structures, built out of stone and scrap metal, surround the area. People stare as they pull into the town and climb out of their vehicles. Max and Furiosa look to be in a sorry state, Max's head bandaged, his clothing splattered with blood, and the side of Furiosa's face starting to bruise.  
  
They part ways with Des and Coden. At Des' request, some of the townspeople help carry the man's body away, and Furiosa apologizes to her quietly. She doesn't know what else to say. Max won't meet the woman's eyes.  
  
As they're left alone, Furiosa joins Max leaning back against his car. They stay, side-by-side in quiet contemplation and mutual guilt.  
  
She was just trying to help. Trying to help others in need. And to help Max. But she'd only made things worse. She reminds herself that the whole family would have died or been enslaved without their help. But it doesn't make her feel much better. It's a failure and a guilt that will follow her, along with the others of her life. But she won't apologize for her actions. She did what was right to the best of her ability. It was just bad luck that it had gone the way it did.  
  
"You okay?" She worries. She's given Max another ghost. Another reason to jolt awake in the middle of the night.  
  
Max grunts noncommittally. "Will be." Silence stretches for minutes.  
  
Furiosa pushes herself suddenly away from the car with a sigh. "I'm going to see if anybody will trade here." She doesn't particularly want to stay in this town longer than they have to now, but there's no sense in wasting an opportunity when it presents itself.  
  
Max doesn't move at first, but after Furiosa has gathered a few items they don't need in a large leather bag and heads off into the town, he follows wordlessly.  
  



	5. Days of the Past

"…Why didn't you kill me back then?" Furiosa's voice is soft, but it catches Max off-guard.  
  
They're camped days away from the nearest sign of life, in a large rock alcove that feels safe enough to spend a couple days resting in. The sun beats down around them, but in the shade of the rock face, they lounge in comfort.  
  
"I… What?"  
  
Furiosa laughs a little, realizing how that question must have sounded without the context in her head.  
  
"When we first met. I tried to shoot you in the head. Twice. But when you got the gun, you didn't kill me. You could have. Easily." She thinks sometimes about how things would have gone for the other women if Max had ended their escape then and there. If he had put a bullet in her skull. "Why didn't you?"  
  
Max mumbles around some half-words. Furiosa waits to see if she'll actually get a coherent answer. "Didn't need to," he finally settles on. "Too many people die."  
  
"You were going to leave us to die."  
  
Max looks uncomfortable, apologetic. "Didn't know. I wasn't thinking." His only thought at the time had been of his own escape.  
  
"I tried to kill you," she reiterates.  
  
"Couldn't blame you. I started it. Pointing a gun at you."  
  
Furiosa accepts the answer as good enough, and eases off.  
  
"You saved me," he murmurs after a long silence. Furiosa gives him a surprised look.  
  
"Back then," he adds, and looks at her briefly, seeing the understanding dawning in her eyes. "I was… scared. Desperate." He pauses, considering his next words for a moment. "An animal." His eyes go anywhere but to hers as he speaks. "You… You brought me back." Max wonders sometimes what his life would be like right now if he hadn't been stopped by those kill switches. He might have gotten free, but he doesn't know if he ever would have felt like a person again.  
  
Furiosa knows she had read him well back then. It took her a few tries to get him to let them into the War Rig, but his reactions had told her what she needed to know. That he wanted nothing more than escape - freedom - and his eyes as she climbed into the driver's seat told her he was terrified. She saw that he was, as he said, like a hurt animal, ready to bite in fear. Needing kindness.  
  
She didn't like it at the time, didn't like anything getting in the way of her own escape, but she gave him what he needed. She gave him the key to take back his own freedom. She couldn't exactly stop him from taking all the guns she had hidden around the War Rig - he did have a gun on her, and she wasn't stupid - but part of her was willing to let him. If he needed to feel in control in order to stop acting like a desperate fool, she'd let him. She offered him trust, treated him like he was on her team, and suddenly he was. In the span of minutes, she had managed to completely turn him around from pointing a gun to handing her one. It just took treating him like a person.  
  
Furiosa comes out of her thoughts to find him looking at her, his head still down slightly, but his eyes lifted to her, his forehead crumpled. She realizes he has just thanked her in his own way, and she smiles faintly. "I'm glad I did."   
  
"Coulda just shot me," he adds as another sort of thanks.  
  
"Oh, I tried."  
  
Something approximating a laugh comes from deep in Max's throat, a quiet, almost choked rumble that catches Furiosa off-guard. "I meant after that." He knows she had every opportunity to shoot him in the head and push him out of the Rig after he handed her a gun.  
  
"Yeah, well you were making yourself useful. I needed an ally."  
  
Max grunts with a nod.  
  
Furiosa has had her share of low points in her life (very low points), but she doesn't know if she was ever quite as lost in her mind as she imagines he had been. She doesn't fully know what it meant to him to be pulled out of that state, but she does know what it meant to her to have him as an ally. And eventually, as a friend.  
  
They settle back into silence. As the day drags on, Max decides to spend his time "hunting," never one to pass up a good opportunity to stay on top of his supplies. Furiosa thinks it's rather hilarious, watching him stalk around and pounce at lizards. He even takes on a snake, and she grimaces, hoping his habitual desperation for food doesn't make him foolish enough to get bitten by something poisonous.   
  
He eventually wanders back into camp, evidently having not been bitten, with a snake slung over one shoulder and a fistful of lizards clasped in his hand.  
  
"Good catch?"  
  
He grunts. "Not bad." He offers her the handful of lizards. She doesn't take them. He tries the snake. Furiosa gives him a dubious look, and he takes them back. "I'll cook them tonight." He forgets sometimes that not everybody's okay with raw lizard.  
  


* * *

  
  
Two days later they pack up and continue onward, and it is a few days after that that they finally come out of unknown territory and Max recognizes a landmark. He's glad to be back in more predictable territory, though one can never know for sure what the wasteland is going to spit out at you.  
  
"Know a place near here. Sort of… oasis." Max says when they stop to consult his map. "Couple days away, maybe. Doesn't taste great, but it won't kill you."   
  
"It's not claimed?"  
  
"Wasn't. Might be now. I don't know."  
  
"I guess we'll find out."  
  
They arrive in a day and a half, just as the sun is nearing the horizon. A small pool lies hidden in a low canyon. Green life - actual green! - grows around the area, shaded by a small tree, barely reaching the top of the canyon walls. There's no sign of people claiming the oasis as their own, and Max quickly discovers why.  
  
He kneels at its edge, cups some water in his hands, sniffs at it, then takes a generous swig. He grimaces. "Worse than I remember."  
  
Furiosa drops down beside him to try some and instantly gags when it reaches her mouth. "We're not taking any of this with us."  
  
"No," Max agrees. They leave the side of the oasis but decide to stay there for the night anyway.  
  
Furiosa wakes in the night to the sound of splashing beyond Aegis. She looks around. Max is missing. It's probably just him, but her instincts tell her not to make unsafe assumptions. She holsters a gun and moves quietly toward the pool.  
  
It is just Max. He kneels over the edge of the pool, his hair and skin dripping, scrubbing his dirty, bloodstained shirt rapidly against a submerged rock.  
  
He jumps as he hears her approach, and spins around, leaving his shirt floating in the water behind him. His muscles are tensed, his hands clenched into fists, ready to strike.  
  
"Sorry." She didn't mean to startle him.  
  
But even though he sees it's her, the wariness in his eyes doesn't fade. He looks almost… threatened. She holds her hand up in front of her and backs off, turning after a few steps to leave him.  
  
He comes back to the vehicles a few minutes later, wearing his soaking wet shirt despite the cold of the night. "Sorry. I… don't like people to see it. Makes me nervous."  
  
Furiosa is about to ask _see what_ , before she remembers how protective he is of his back. She had seen his tattoo only a couple times before, and only when Max had no choice due to injury. She didn't read most of it, but she can't forget the degrading words she did see: _Isolate psychotic, keep muzzled…_ She wonders if he knows those words. She wonders if he'd _want_ to know. She knows the general formula of what the Organic Mechanic would write on his blood bags. She can't imagine the information would make Max feel any better.  
  
"Do you know what it says?"  
  
He opens his mouth to speak, but takes pause. "O-negative. Hi-octane. Universal donor," he recites, a little disturbed by how the words are burned into his mind as clearly as they are written on his back. "That's all I could read." He had found a mirror once. Stood in front of it for nearly an hour, staring at his back out of the corner of his eye. Between the upside-down tattoo and mirror-image, it had been hard enough to pick out the clearest words on his back. He gave up on the others.  
  
"Do you want to know the rest?"  
  
Max considers it seriously. The words feel like they're burning on his skin. He did want to know at one time, but he's not sure if he does any longer. It's just a reminder that for months upon months he was treated as nothing but a thing. He certainly doesn't want to know at the expense of someone else seeing the tattoo. Even Furiosa. Knowing the words is one thing. Seeing them permanently printed across his back is somehow worse.  
  
"No," he finally answers and sits down on his sleeping blanket.  
  
They're silent for a long time. Max shivers and pulls his knees up to his chest.  
  
"You're going to freeze." Furiosa sighs.  
  
Max grunts.  
  
"You don't have any spare clothes, do you?" She doesn't know what possessed him to try to wash his shirt in the middle of the night.  
  
"No."  
  
She shakes her head and chucks her spare blanket at him. "At least lay your shirt out to dry. I won't look." She turns her back to him and lays down.  
  
Cautiously, Max does as she says, then grabs his jacket to cover his back before wrapping himself in a blanket and settling down again.  
  
“We are not things,” he murmurs, remembering the words he heard on the Fury Road, and later saw on the wall of the vault. He still needs to remember that sometimes, when he’s been reminded of his tattoo.  
  



	6. Battle

They pick another spot on Max’s map, a place he wants to show to Furiosa, but remains oddly vague about. It’ll take quite a few days to get there, but it’ll be worth it, he tells her.  
  
The first few days of travel are uneventful, as most of the open Wasteland tends to be, Furiosa has learned. Max dodges around seemingly randomly (avoiding unfriendly or non-noteworthy tribes and settlements, mostly) and she wonders if he actually knows where he’s going.  
  
Three days in, Max realizes he’s made a slight miscalculation. He didn’t mean to come this way, didn’t mean to come anywhere near these lands. He knows the territory they’re near, and knows to steer clear. He’s careful to skirt around the edge, as far away as possible without going completely out of their way. This is not a tribe he wants to get too close to. He didn't anticipate that they might have spread their territory this far out since last he was here. He realizes too late that he should have taken the long way around.  
  
Max doesn't even see the trap coming. Doesn't realize he's been caught until his chest smashes into his steering wheel as his car comes crashing to a halt, the ground dropped out beneath it. Furiosa, by luck, barely hits the edge of the pit trap, her left wheels dipping into it. Aegis tilts dangerously, threatening to tip, but her momentum carries her past with a violent bump, and she slams on the brakes, skidding to a halt.  
  
She shouldn't be getting out of her truck, and she knows it. Somebody set that trap, and chances are that somebody will be coming for its catch. But that crash couldn’t have been particularly good on Max. She scans the surroundings briefly and sees nothing, so she leaps from Aegis and runs over to the pit trap. It's not deep, just enough to stop a vehicle in its tracks.  
  
It takes Max a minute to regain the ability to breathe. He groans, shifting back against his seat as he assesses his situation. Feels like at least one broken rib. Car's probably stuck. Shit. They're not supposed to be out this far. He opens the door and hauls himself out as Furiosa comes down the slope of the pit.  
  
"Are you alright?"  
  
Max nods, hand pressed to his aching chest. He turns to inspect his car. The undercarriage is stuck on the edge of the pit, the rear wheels just barely off the ground. Probably not going anywhere on its own.  
  
"I can tow it out," Furiosa says, turning back toward her truck.  
  
"No," Max answers, looking into the distance, his eyes wide as he hears engines roar to life not too far away. "We go. We go now." Max clambers up out of the pit and runs toward Aegis. Furiosa glances back at the Interceptor briefly. Whatever is coming, Max is willing to leave his car behind in order to escape it. She rushes after him.  
  
They scramble into the truck and Furiosa starts it up just as vehicles come around an escarpment in front of them, blocking their path. She swings Aegis around the pit trap, heading back the way they came. Before she can pick up speed, though, the vehicles are upon them, quickly surrounding them and boxing them in. Max leans out the window, shooting at their attackers. Furiosa grabs for a gun from the ceiling above her as the truck to her left lines up with her window. She shoots the passenger, shoots the driver, but doesn't see a third one who has scrambled from the back onto the roof of the cab until it's too late. He thrusts a pronged harpoon through the window, slamming it into Furiosa's shoulder and delivering a shock of electricity. With a guttural yell, Furiosa's muscles convulse, and she loses control. Aegis swerves to the side, smashing into the attacker's vehicle as it falls back, then jerks the other way, smashing into the one on the other side. They push back, controlling Aegis' path as the vehicle in front of them hits the brakes, bringing Furiosa and Max to a lurching stop. Max pulls himself back in the window as Furiosa slumps to the side.  
  
Both doors are flung open only moments after they stop. Furiosa comes back to herself as they drag her out. Max is already fighting the ones that seize the gun in his hand and try to drag him out of the truck, but he stops suddenly as the barrel of a gun meets his head. Furiosa manages to knock one out before they stop her with the same threat.  
  
They tie Max's wrists and legs, but don't seem to know what to do with Furiosa's metal arm, so they truss her up in chains, both arms pinned to her sides. They hang the both of them from hooks on the back of one of the bigger trucks, Max hanging by his wrists, Furiosa hooked on by the chains wrapped around her. The tightness of them crushes her rib cage and she gasps for breath.  
  
They watch the party tow the Interceptor out of the pit trap and raid Aegis for anything useful. They beat on the heavy cage door in back, trying to open it up for the treasures inside, but eventually give up. One climbs into the cab, and the small convoy of trucks takes off. Furiosa’s truck only makes it so far before the kill switches kick in, forcing them to stop.  
  
Furiosa and Max sustain a few more injuries - mostly bruises - as the men try to get them to tell how to start the truck again. Max takes a number of blows to the ribs and stomach. Furiosa gets the butt of a shotgun to the face and nearly ends up with a broken knee. But their attackers back down before Max and Furiosa do. They'd apparently rather have them alive and relatively undamaged than have easy access to Aegis and the supplies.  
  
Furiosa spits out a mouthful of blood as the vehicles start up again and pull away, leaving her truck behind.  
  
"You know this tribe?" She looks to Max. He had apparently known enough to want to get the hell away from them.  
  
"Yes." He doesn’t know them from experience, luckily (up until now), but he'd heard enough stories about them.  
  
"What are we in for?"  
  
"Mm… Entertainment, probably. Or food."  
  
Furiosa's brows rise. Max twists to look back at her. He wishes he were kidding, but his look tells her he's not.  
  
"Fight them," Max adds. "Probably won't get away… But they eat the weak." He knows he doesn't really need to tell her to fight, but better safe than sorry with an insane tribe of cannibals.  
  
They eventually pull into a large town, festooned the way one would typically expect of a tribe like this. Skulls are the predominant theme. Max and Furiosa are pulled down and dragged off, both fighting against their captors for whatever it’s worth, and both all the more scared by the fact that they’re being dragged off in separate directions.

 

* * *

  
  
Max isn’t surprised when they bring him to an arena the following afternoon, after a long, cold night locked in a makeshift cell. He’d heard about this in stories whispered about this tribe. People captured are brought to fight, to challenge their standing champion in a battle for survival. The tribe gets entertainment, and the loser, so he’d heard, becomes dinner.  
  
Max worries as they lead him into the underbelly of the haphazard structure. If he’s meant for battle, what was Furiosa taken away for? He doesn’t know what else they do with captured people, other than battle them or eat them. Wherever she is, he hopes she’s giving them hell.  
  
Inside the structure, they free his arms and take off the chain from his ankles that keeps him from taking anything more than small, mincing steps. There are no less than three guns trained on him to keep him compliant. They shove him into a narrow compartment and shut the grated metal door behind him. Light filters in between the slats of the gate in front of him, and a crowd cheers wildly outside. He steels himself. He’s prepared for some brute of an opponent, someone who’s probably survived fight after fight. Max doesn’t consider himself a weak fighter. He’s survived two separate Thunderdomes before. Hopefully he can survive this as well.  
  
The gate in front of him swings upward, opening into a sizable arena lined by steep, tall walls and a jeering crowd. Max squints against the bright light. The sight that meets him is not what he expected, and he freezes in his tracks. Across the arena, standing beneath a door not unlike the one above him, is Furiosa.  
  
His mind races. His opponent is Furiosa. He's pitted against her in what's supposed to be a fight to the death. They have to get out of this, now more than ever. But how? He’s frustratingly short on ideas, but at least they’ll have each other to work with.  
  
A sharp spear jabs Max in the back, drawing blood even through his jacket, and he staggers forward with a grunt. The gate slams shut behind him, and he stands, facing down his closest friend.  
  
“You will fight!” A man bellows from a special box among the spectators of the arena, echoed by feral hisses and yells from the rest of the crowd. Max and Furiosa both turn to glare at him.  
  
“One of you will die by your own hands, or both of you will die by ours.” The chieftain raises his arms dramatically, and a man stands up beside him, aiming a rifle into the ring, putting Max in his sights first, then Furiosa. Max stares grimly. Well, he didn't expect this to be easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You wanted a cliffhanger, right?  
> No?  
> Oh, well here's a cliffhanger.


	7. Gladiators

Furiosa tackles Max, and he hits the ground hard with a surprised grunt.  
  
“Fight me,” she growls in his face. “We’re not dying here.”  
  
Max blinks at her, pausing only a moment before he wrenches one arm from her grip and elbows her across the face, throwing her off.  
  
“Too many guns,” he grunts as he pushes himself up and lunges toward her, his punch landing in the dirt as she rolls aside. There’s only one rifle trained on them now, but he has no doubt that there are more lying in wait for them to make the wrong move.  
  
“The gates,” she responds in a low voice, just loud enough for Max to hear over the jeering crowd. “We get out of sight.” She jumps to her feet and and spins on him, landing a kick to his ribs. Max yells as he hits the ground again. At least that wasn’t the side with the broken rib. Still hurt, though.  
  
He takes a deep breath, lunges again, and grapples her legs, bringing her down into the dirt. “Guns there, too.” He jams his arm into her gut, pushing her back down as she tries to get up. He takes a brief moment to think while he has her down. There are probably men waiting there, but it’s the best option they’ve got. They would have a better chance fighting their way out in a less open space. Furiosa’s probably thinking the same thing. The trick would be getting into one of the gates before they got shot by the sniper. His thought process is lost as Furiosa wiggles out of his grip and decks him in the face.  
  
He shakes his head, trying to clear it, trying to remember what he was doing. The gates. He scrambles to his feet and runs, much to the amusement of the crowd, judging by their laughter. The wood on the gate he came through looked pretty old and rotten, maybe he can break through it. Furiosa catches up to him as he nears the gate, and slams into him, throwing both their weight into the door. The surface splinters a little, but the door doesn’t give. Nope. Max slumps to the ground. Not going to break through it. Max’s shoulder and chest scream in pain from the impact. Desperate, he pries at the bottom edge, trying to lift it up. There’s a gunshot, and a bullet splinters the wood next to his hand. He freezes.  
  
“No escape!” the chieftain yells.  
  
Furiosa suddenly has him in a headlock, and hauls him backward. “Plan B?”  
  
Max chokes, and pries at her arm. It’s a little hard to think like this. “One of us has to win.”  
  
“You mean one of us has to die.”  
  
“Only look dead,” he croaks out before he runs out of air and slams his elbow into her hip until she releases him and stumbles backward. He gets to his feet, spins on her and stands ready, looking at her warily.  
  
Furiosa’s not too sure about this plan. It isn’t completely fool-proof. Sure, ending the fight is the most likely way to get them out of this arena, but if the loser isn’t actually dead, it could fail quickly. She darts forward to get close to Max again, and swings at his head. “Don’t think it’s a good idea.”  
  
Max ducks quickly to the side. “Plan C?” he challenges.  
  
Furiosa falters. She has nothing. The pause gives Max enough time to ram into her, bringing them both down to the ground again where he can use his weight to his advantage.  
  
“Who wins?” Furiosa grunts after she hits the ground.  
  
“Whoever wins.” Max scrambles to restrain her, but she decks him across the face again. (At least he can be glad she’s not using her prosthetic arm to attack him.)  
  
“We’re evenly matched. We’d both be worn out by then,” she argues. She struggles under his weight.  
  
“So you win,” Max grunts.  
  
“Reason?” Furiosa manages to turn beneath him onto her side and elbows him hard in the chest. Max falls away, winded. Seems like reason enough to him.  
  
“Enough playing!” the chieftain yells, holding his arms up dramatically again as Max and Furiosa pull themselves slowly to their feet and turn toward him. “Weapons!”  
  
The crowd cheers with wild, malicious joy.  
  
Max and Furiosa jump out of the way as two objects hit the ground between them, thrown from atop the wall around the arena. They look down to see a heavy, spiked mace, and a short-sword.  
  
Max stops short. What is this, Rome?  
  
Furiosa eyes him with a look that says they’re in for it now. Neither makes a move.  
  
“Fight! Fight!” The crowd yells, and Max glances up to see the sniper rifle raise to aim at them again. He dives for the mace, a powerful but slow weapon. Furiosa should be able to keep out of its way. Furiosa darts forward, and straightens up with the sword in hand.  
  
Furiosa swings first. Max manages to block by sheer luck, and jumps back when she swings again. Neither is particularly skilled with these weapons, but Furiosa has the upper hand, her speed barely giving Max a chance to attack. She swings but doesn’t stab. There’s only so much damage she’s willing to do for this charade. She dodges his occasional attacks, and gradually picks away at him, landing a cutting blow here and there, slowing him down but doing nothing fatal.  
  
Max’s jacket saves him from most of the damage, but the blade is sharp and his jacket is old and worn, and it cuts deeply a few times. Blood runs down his arm from a cut near his shoulder, over his ribs and stomach from a gash in his side and slice across his front, and down his pant leg from one at his thigh. They hurt, but they’re not enough to bring him down. He needs a harder hit than these to go down and make his loss convincing.  
  
“Hit me,” he growls as he lunges at her, making his own moves more aggressive to try to encourage her to do the same. Neither wants to hurt the other, but there is only so long they can stall.  
  
Max blocks a particularly powerful strike and redirects Furiosa’s momentum to send her stumbling to the side. His next strike misses, but now he has an opening as she regains her footing and reorients. His advantage doesn’t last long, and her blade cuts into his forearm as she spins on him. Max growls. Still not enough.  
  
He swings wildly, blocking most of her attacks and attacking her when he can. He breaks through most of her blocks by sheer force and momentum, but she’s quick to duck or dodge out of the way.  
  
Until she doesn’t.  
  
The mace finally meets a sudden resistance, and Max freezes as Furiosa goes down with a yell. He hadn’t thought he would actually hit her. His weapon was slow, Furiosa was quick.  
  
He stands over her, staring in shock, hoping she’ll get up again, but knowing deeper in his brain that this is how things have to go now. He has to play the winner.  
  
The shouting of the crowd quiets down as the chieftain stands and holds his arms up for silence. “Not dead! Kill her!”  
  
Max crouches down and puts his hand near Furiosa’s face, feeling her shallow, forcefully-controlled breaths against his skin. He straightens up. “She is dead.”  
  
“Sword! Make sure!”  
  
Eyeing the sniper, Max picks up the sword and stands over Furiosa, looking down at her still form. He lifts it slowly. “I’m sorry…” He jams the blade down into her shoulder, dangerously near her heart and lung, but aimed to hit only muscle. He sees her face twist at the pain, but she manages to stay quiet and still. Max lets out a shaky breath and stumbles back, his head spinning, his vision tunneling to black and back again, sickened by this whole thing. Propping the sword in the dirt and leaning on it heavily, he looks back up at the chieftain. “She _is_ dead,” he reiterates.  
  
He hardly cares if their plan will fail at this point. He’d rather be shot now than kill Furiosa. For a tense moment the chieftain scrutinizes him and Furiosa. Max holds his breath.  
  
Finally, the other man throws up his arms. “He is winner!”  
  
The crowd roars loudly. After a few minutes, one of the gates opens, and men come out with guns aimed at Max. His instinct is to hold onto the sword and stand protectively over Furiosa, but he fights it. He throws down the weapon and stands shakily, trying to look more worn-out and beaten-down than he actually is. He turns to go with the cannibals willingly, hoping they won’t see a need to put him in chains again, and allows himself only a small glance as two of them lift Furiosa’s limp form and begin to drag her with.  
  
The chieftain begins making some speech to the cheering crowd, and Max forcefully tunes it out when the word _feast_ reaches his ears. He thanks what little luck they have that at least the spectators will be distracted for a little while, and hopes their noise will be enough to cover up the fight about to start as soon as he and Furiosa are out of the arena.


	8. Escape

Not a moment after they’re in the narrow space behind the gate and the wooden door has closed, Furiosa kicks forcefully, sending both of the men carrying her down to the ground. Max takes the cue and spins for the gun he can feel aimed at his back. He wrenches it out of the cannibal’s hand before the man can figure out what’s going on, and then Max drops, anticipating shots from the men that were in front of him. The first shot takes out the one he had taken the gun from, and Max curses to himself despite the turn of luck. Gunshots are not a good way to escape unnoticed. Not that he had really thought they would get away without exchanging shots, but it would have been nice. He reaches over his shoulder blindly and fires the gun he had just stolen, and is rewarded with a yell and a thud.  
  
Furiosa yells in pain and anger, fighting against the two that were carrying her as they try to pin her. Max reaches out to aim at one, knowing he shouldn’t fire more shots than strictly needed, and also knowing there is still one behind him who was, last he saw, gathering up chains for Max. He hears the chains hit the ground behind him, and he thinks better of his actions. Neither of the ones Furiosa is fighting have their guns drawn as they struggle with her, and she kicks one in the face, reaching for the other’s neck with her metal hand. Max spins on the one behind him in time to see the man fumble for his holster. Max whips him across the face with the gun in his hand, then grabs one of the dropped chains as the man falls back. But now the cannibal has the gun out of its holster, and Max ducks again as he fires at his head. Max manages to grasp the barrel of the gun and aims it high as the other man fires again. They struggle for control of the weapon, and Max briefly debates between staying quiet, and getting out of here quickly. But as the cannibal fires a third time past Max’s shoulder, Max decides staying quiet is a lost cause, and shoots the man with the gun still clutched in his other hand.  
  
He turns as Furiosa growls angrily again. One man is lying, unconscious or dead, Max can’t tell, on the ground behind her as she straddles the other, her metal hand clamped around his throat. He goes still quickly, and she brings her hand down on his head for extra measure, then turns toward Max. He reaches out to her with a nod. She grasps his hand, and he pulls her up to her feet quickly.  
  
They gather any guns easily found on the men littering the floor, and then they’re running. The crowd above them still roars with abandon, but they both know their time to get out may still be short. Max quickly realizes his mental map of how to get out of here is useless, as they were taken through the door Furiosa had come out of.  
  
“Where?” he asks, slowing down just enough to let Furiosa pass him. She rushes ahead, her flesh hand pressed to her bleeding side. The hallway branches off to a dark room to the left, and Furiosa comes skidding to a stop. She turns to look at Max, and he knows by her look exactly what is in that room, without anything needing to be said. He glances in to see a row of haphazard cells with broken, listless people crouched and huddled in each of them. Max glances nervously back down the hallway, but he knows better than to argue with her, despite the danger. She steps into the alcove, and Max backs in after her, a gun in each hand, covering the way they came.  
  
He won’t argue with her - they won’t leave these people to die - but he also sets his mind to not feel responsible for them. He won’t repeat what happened last time. He understands that Furiosa is still looking for redemption from years of horrible deeds done, and he won’t stop her from that. But he knows he needs to learn to not let it damage him if it doesn’t go well. The man from the family they had helped not so long ago walks by in the passageway in front of Max, stopping to stare at him with dead eyes. Max blinks and shakes his head, tightening his grip on the guns in his hands.  
  
Behind him, Furiosa has grabbed a set of keys off their hook on the wall, and goes to one cell after another as quickly as she can. Each lock has a different key, and she mutters a curse as she tries key after key before finding the correct one and moving on to the next cell.  
  
“Hurry!” Max barks over his shoulder, hearing shouts echo from down the hall as an eerie wind whistles through the structure. Furiosa has three cells opened when the footsteps grow near, and she’s beside Max in an instant. The first three cannibals don’t even look their way as they run toward the gate from which Max and Furiosa came, and the two of them hold their breaths, hoping they’ll be able to sneak by undetected. But the fourth comes to a stop, turning toward the cell bank, and drops in an instant with two bullets to the chest. Furiosa surges out of the alcove as the other three stop and turn, Max right on her heels, putting his back to hers as he checks the opposite direction for more people. Seeing no-one, he spins as shots ring through the narrow passageway. Max is suddenly aware that the crowd above them is going quiet, and he fires quickly, knowing their time to escape is definitely growing short now. A bullet pings off Furiosa’s mechanical arm and she jerks like it causes her physical pain. Max feels one zip by his face, too close for comfort, and a moment later another slams into Furiosa’s shoulder, and she stumbles back with a yell.  
  
They shoot down the last of the men in front of them, and Furiosa turns quickly back to the cells, her mechanical hand making a crunching, grinding noise as she tries to flex it. She winces at the screaming pain in her shoulder, but doesn’t say anything. The three prisoners Furiosa had released are just finishing opening the other two cells, and the people stand, looking scared yet hopeful.  
  
“This might be a suicide run,” Furiosa tells them matter-of-factly, letting her damaged arm fall to her side, forgotten for now. “Stay or risk coming, it’s your choice, but we’re going now.” She turns without waiting for their responses, takes one look at Max, and steps out into the hallway again. The people follow, and Max takes up the rear, keeping a careful watch behind them as they move.  
  
Furiosa finds the exit quickly, but ducks back in the moment she’s gotten a look outside. She holds out her arm to stop the people who stumble up behind her. Max peeks around the group to see the spectators from the arena filing down the sides of the structure, flooding the area in front of them.  
  
“Back.” Furiosa pushes the prisoners back into the darkness of the passageway and turns to Max. “They might be able to sneak by unnoticed,” she says in a low voice, motioning to the others, “but those people out there just saw us fight in the ring. We need a distraction if we’re getting out.”  
  
Max thinks a moment. “Or we wait it out.”  
  
“Wait for what opening? How long do you think we’ll last before somebody finds us?”  
  
Max holds up a gun in answer. Easy way to solve that problem.  
  
“That’ll just draw more attention.”  
  
Max lowers the gun. He licks his lips and thinks again.  
  
One of the people they freed speaks up. “What if we start a fire?” Everybody turns to look at the man. He glances from Max to Furiosa. “They’d be running one way, we’d be running the other.”  
  
Max looks to Furiosa and dips his head to the side. It’s as good a plan as any.  
  
“We’ll need fuel. And a way to light it.” Furiosa glances down the passageway. It’s unlikely that they store such things here, but it’s worth a look. The passage splits two ways from the entrance. The other way likely leads to the other gate. “Two of you go with him. The rest, with me. We’ll search both ways for anything we can use.”  
  
Max gives a nod, waits to see which two choose to come with him, and then darts past the exit to head down the other way. Furiosa returns the way they came, and both stay ready for a fight in case they’re discovered by more of the cannibals.   
  
Max is honestly surprised they don’t encounter any more, but when he reaches another exit and glances out, he realizes why. The wind is picking up, and he has to squint against it, but in the distance he can see a vast wall of dark orange, billowing and churning with a slowness that belies the speed he knows it will be upon them. The people outside are starting to leave the area quickly, heading for homes and shelters to keep out of the storm. He motions to the people following him, and turns back the way they came.  
  
“Hey,” he says quietly, trying not to get himself shot as he finds Furiosa digging through swords and shields and other implements of ancient warfare in a small weapons storeroom. “Think I found our opening.”  
  
Furiosa turns and looks at him questioningly.  
  
“Storm,” he says simply, pointing in the direction he had seen it.  
  
She raises her brows. She knows well the dangers of venturing into sandstorms, but she’ll take that over cannibals any day. It’ll certainly provide the distraction and cover they need to get out of here.  
  
They settle down and wait, Furiosa and Max ever aware, trying to listen for any sound of approach over the ever-increasing wind. As the adrenaline of action wears off, the tiredness and pain sets into both of them. Furiosa sits stock still, her breaths coming in quiet rasps, and Max paces, watching Furiosa nervously and trying to ignore the sting of his wounds and the blood drying on his clothes.  
  
It’s not until the dust reaches them even in the depths of the arena that they move. Furiosa and Max each pull their scarf over their mouth and nose, and the others press various pieces of cloth and clothing over their own faces as they venture out into the storm. They keep their bodies low, trying not to get blown over by the wind, and cross the empty compound almost blindly. Furiosa fears they may be fighting a lost cause as they navigate around structures and houses, lost in the dust and lacking a way to escape. They can’t stay out in the open much longer, not without being torn to shreds. They find the edge of the town, and skirt around it until they finally come upon a grouping of trucks and other vehicles.  
  
Furiosa’s eyes burn and tear up with sand by the time she finally spots the familiar outline of the shell of her truck, and she breathes a sigh of relief. The cannibals had apparently gone back to tow it in, and she smiles at the irony that they had inadvertently helped their escape. The back of the truck is opened, the doors swinging wildly in the wind, but at a quick glance it looks like most of the supplies are still inside. Furiosa slams the doors shut and rushes to the front of the truck. Max hurries past her when he finally spots his Interceptor in the light of a flash of lightning, and they both climb in as the others stumble after them.  
  
One of the prisoners goes with Max, two more cram into Aegis, but the remaining two break into a third vehicle and start it up without hesitation. The three take off as fast as they can, leaving the town behind in the howling wind and blowing dust, all of them eager to put as much distance between them and the tribe as possible.


	9. Healing

They drive as far and as fast as they can, until their engines choke on sand and they’re forced to stop and wait out the storm. They hunker down, wait, and hope.  
  
The woman who had gone with Max is thankfully about as talkative as he is, so he’s glad he doesn’t have to put up with conversation. He wishes he could sleep away the fatigue that weighs heavy in his bones (he knows well that these storms can last hours) but he’s still too on-edge, and knows his chances of sleeping in the presence of this stranger are close to zero. The people in Furiosa’s truck talk quietly between themselves, and Furiosa closes her eyes, trying to keep breathing.  
  
Max and Furiosa are both slow with pain and blood loss as they finally emerge from their vehicles in the wake of the storm, but the others pick up the slack, helping to beat sand out of air filters and check the engines.  
  
“My village isn’t far from here,” one of the freed prisoners offers when all three vehicles have been properly checked. “I can show you. We’ll be safe there.”  
  
“We don’t know if they’ll come after us,” Furiosa protests. “We should get farther away.”  
  
“It can withstand an attack from them,” he assures her. “Always has.”  
  
Seeing Furiosa dragging painfully as she moves back toward her truck, her mechanical arm still hanging dead by her side, Max carefully suggests she take a rest and let one of the others drive.   
  
She dismisses him with a shake of her head and pulls herself up into the driver’s seat. “I’ll be fine.”  
  
Max follows closely behind Furiosa as they head out, growing increasingly worried as she starts to swerve slightly. But it’s barely an hour before they reach the village, and they find themselves pulling to a stop outside of an impressive metal-plated wall. The curve of the structure suggests a small population within, but the defenses are formidable. Guns emerge from atop the walls on either side of a solid gate as the vehicles roll to a stop.   
  
The man gets out, his hands up. “It’s me. We’re safe. It’s Lev.”  
  
“Lev?” One of the people atop the wall calls. “We thought you were a goner! Who are these people? Do you trust them?”  
  
“They broke us free from the cannibal tribe. I trust them, and they need help.”  
  
There’s yelling atop and within the wall, and then with a metallic groan, the gate grinds slowly aside, and the three vehicles enter.  
  
The villagers rejoice over the return of one of their own, take the other escapees in with open arms, and fuss over Max and Furiosa. It’s not until Max snaps at one who tries to remove his jacket and look at his wounds that they back off.  
  
“We can take care of it,” Furiosa tells them tiredly, putting Max’s overstressed growl into words.  
  
They end up giving Max and Furiosa a small unused hut nestled against the outer wall. Furiosa finds their medical kit still tucked away in the back of her truck, and they both stagger into the little hut. Furiosa sits down heavily on the edge of the makeshift bed, finally letting the facade drop. She slouches back as Max helps her remove her arm, followed by her blood-soaked corset.  
  
Furiosa slides the neck of her shirt down over her shoulder and Max checks it carefully, wiping blood away to see how bad the wounds are. “I’m sorry,” he keeps muttering as he looks over the wounds, his face fearful and guilty. “I am so sorry…” Furiosa lets out a quiet sigh at his words, and he gingerly pulls the bottom of her shirt up to check her side. “‘M sorry.”  
  
“Shut up, you had no choice.”  
  
Max promptly shuts up.  
  
The injury to her side is messy. The belts around her middle saved her from some of it, but the spikes of the mace had still cut deep, rough gashes into her skin between and below the belts, and the whole area is already starting to bruise from the force of the blow.  
  
“Broken ribs,” she groans.  
  
Max inhales slowly against his own broken rib and nods, biting back another apology. He cleans and bandages her side, puts a few stitches in the stab wound on her chest, and carefully extracts the bullet from her shoulder. Furiosa lies back, pale and tired when he finally finishes bandaging her shoulder.  
  
Max waits until she’s settled and starting to drift off to sleep before he limps over to a small stool across the room, sheds his jacket and pulls off his bloodied shirt. He hisses as he applies disinfectant to the gashes across his stomach and ribs, but at least these are shallow enough that he can bandage them without resorting to stitches. Furiosa had held back on the strikes aimed at his torso, thankfully. He wraps his stomach and ribs tightly to slow the bleeding that started up again when he peeled his shirt away, ties the ends of the bandage and looks at the two slices in his arm. These ones are deep, and he sorts through the medical kit quietly until he comes up with a needle and thread. He takes a deep breath, rubs in some disinfectant, and picks up the needle. He grunts as he makes the first stitch in his upper arm, and Furiosa stirs, slowly trying to sit up again.  
  
“No, rest,” he rumbles quietly when he sees her swing her legs over the edge of the bed.  
  
“And how do you think you’re going to tie those stitches one-handed?”  
  
Max looks down at his arm and frowns at the loose thread. He’d managed to stitch wounds one-handed before, when he was alone in the wasteland, but that wasn’t to say it was an easy task.  
  
Furiosa comes over to him and crouches by his side. She wipes away some of the blood he had neglected to clean up, then picks up the needle dangling on its string. “Hold this,” she says, motioning to the loose end.  
  
Between the two of them, each one-handed, they manage to stitch up the gashes in his arm. Max looks at his thigh through the slice in his pant leg, then tears the hole bigger, and they repeat the process on his leg. With all of his wounds stitched and bandaged, it is now Max who leans back with a tired sigh. They sit in silence, both worn-out and in pain.  
  
Furiosa finally pulls herself up and considers sleeping arrangements for the night, but when she turns to Max, she finds him already asleep against the corner. A tired smile crosses her face. She should wake him up and make him lie down, but she so rarely sees such a peaceful look on his face, that she can’t bring herself to break it. He’ll be alright there for now.  
  
It is the early hours of the morning when Max makes an anguished noise that makes Furiosa jump awake. She has her gun out in an instant, lowering it just as quickly when she finds Max's head on the other end of the sight. He's groaning quietly, his hands clamped over his ears.  
  
"Max?" She's not sure if he can hear her. She drops the gun and moves over toward him, touching his shoulder gingerly, prepared to jump back if he reacts violently. He tenses, then sags, his hands sliding away from his ears. His breathing is heavy, and he says nothing.  
  
She waits for his breathing to slow before she speaks. "Who was it?" She knows it's his ghosts that bring about these kinds of reactions in him, when they get especially loud or overwhelmingly accusing. She doesn't know why she asks. His ghosts are his own business.  
  
"Angharad," he admits after a minute.  
  
Furiosa tries to imagine Angharad yelling at him and blaming him, but she can’t quite picture it. She was full of fire and rage, but not at Max. She wouldn’t have been, not after he joined their cause. She was forgiving of those who deserved it. “You didn't fail her…" Furiosa has said these words before. She knows they won't help him, but she doesn't know what else to say.  
  
"I killed her."  
  
"She fell. You couldn't have stopped that."  
  
"Slipped. Because her leg was bleeding."  
  
"You don't know that."  
  
Max just nods. Yes, he does. He hadn't seen it, but in his mind, he's sure he knows. And there’s no arguing that the reason she was outside of the Rig in the first place was for Max’s sake. Furiosa is silent. The ghost in his mind is going to haunt him no matter what she says.  
  
She wants to help him so badly. She wants to see this broken man whole again. She wants him to have quiet days where it’s just him in his head. But she wonders sometimes if it's even possible. Or if it is, if she is equipped to help him get there. She's afraid that he's so lost to the voices and the guilt that there is no hope.  
  
The next day, Lev and the others that they had broken out of the arena jail cells visit them to thank them formally, and Lev offers that they can stay as long as they need to heal. The village patron also comes to see how they are doing, but otherwise the townspeople generally leave them alone. When they do meet them, though, the people are welcoming, and the sharp edge of waiting for an attack and a fight eventually fades from Furiosa and Max’s minds. It is nice to be in a protected place again with a wall around them and people who don’t want to kill them or take from them, and both of them need it. Both are down to one good arm, and neither wants to risk getting into any fights out there with their current handicaps. Furiosa, especially, is glad for the safety and the time to heal and repair, as both metal and flesh components of her left arm are out of commission. She keeps her arm strapped to her side to immobilize her shoulder, and fiddles one-handed with her damaged prosthetic. Max sits quietly in the corner and stitches shut the slices in his jacket with thick upholstery thread, but eventually moves over to help her with some of the finer repairs. They coordinate delicately, both working together to remove the damaged finger and piece it back together as best they can.  
  
Max is almost completely healed by the time Furiosa can move her shoulder again and finally straps her repaired prosthetic on and tries it out. It’s rough and still grinds a bit, but it works, and though it still hurts to move her arm, she can finally use it and that’s good enough for her.   
  
Once Max’s jacket and clothing are stitched and patched, and they’ve finally fixed Furiosa’s hand, both of them grow restless quickly, itching for a task to keep them busy. Furiosa is a little better at sitting back and letting herself heal, but Max isn’t one to sit still for long. At least at the Citadel he liked most of the people he was expected to interact with, and there were always tasks to be done. Here he knows none of the townspeople, and after he checks over his engine, and double checks Furiosa’s checks of her own, there is little left to do. He helps Furiosa inventory and organize their supplies. They make some small trades with the townspeople, and then they settle in and wait to heal.  
  
Furiosa is cleaning some of their guns (for the second time) as Max paces, deep in thought. She sighs, looking up at him, and rolls her shoulder experimentally. The pain’s not too bad anymore. Her side still hurts, but she’s lived with broken ribs before.  
  
“Come on, let’s go. You’re going to go crazy if we stay here much longer.”  
  
Max halts and looks at her. “Already crazy,” he comments, but he starts scooping up tools and items scattered around the small hut and throwing them into their proper toolboxes and crates.  
  
“Well, you’re going to drive me crazy.” She stands up and starts gathering the guns she was working on.  
  
“Mm.”  
  
They carry their things out of the hut and pack them carefully into the back of Aegis and the Interceptor. Max would just as soon leave without saying anything, but he realizes it’s too late for that as people start to gather around, curious as to what they are doing, and those they rescued emerge one by one.  
  
“You’re leaving, then? There’s nothing else we can do for you?” One of them asks.  
  
“Mm… Shelter was enough,” Max answers, looking a little startled by the sudden proximity.  
  
“You’ve done what few in this wasteland would do,” another says. “You saved our lives. I won’t forget you.”  
  
Furiosa smiles politely. Max just huffs. He doesn’t like being treated as a hero. But inwardly, he’s glad that nothing went wrong this time, and his mind feels a little lighter for it.  
  
“Thank you for letting us stay,” Furiosa says to Lev.   
  
“Of course. Be well,” he responds.  
  
Max is already climbing into his Interceptor, a not so subtle way to tell Furiosa he’s done with this place and wants to leave. She turns toward her truck and climbs in, and they’re soon out of the walls of the little town and on their way.  
  
Furiosa glances out her side window at Max as they take off, but Max’s eyes are dead ahead. He’s not going to repeat another mistake like his last one. He'll take the long way around if he has to.


	10. As it Was

They decide to continue toward Max's mysterious destination. They have several more days to ride, but there are no more particularly dangerous tribes (that Max knows of) between them and it. He is still careful to watch for marked borders or any signs of people occupying the land they drive through, though.  
  
They encounter one raiding party on the way there, but it is small, and after a few rams from Furiosa's truck and some well-placed shots from Max, the raiders back off. Aegis is a tempting target, but it is well-defended, and the two road warriors do not back down easily. These raiders, at least, have enough self-preservation to realize that.  
  
It is only a couple more days before a hilly landscape begins to rise up around them. Max leads them deeper into the hills, stopping occasionally to scrutinize his surroundings. Furiosa smirks as he starts circling and zigzagging. She wonders again if he ever has any idea where he's going.  
  
The hills grow wider and larger, becoming less and less hill-like, until they finally come across a mesa, tall and steep-edged, but with a side of it missing, sloughed off long ago and collected in a wide slide at its feet. Max pulls into a narrow valley between it and the next formation over, and gets out.  
  
He says nothing as she joins him, tucking her truck close to the rock face, as out of sight as she can make it, beast that it is. He digs through the back of his Interceptor and emerges with a length of old rope and a lantern. He holds the lantern up briefly, perhaps indicating that she should bring her own (she only sometimes understands him when he doesn't use words) then heads back toward the fallen slope. She finds a second lantern in her truck and follows quickly to catch up, wondering what could be here that he wanted to show her.  
  
"Found this a long time ago," he tells her as they reach the rubble slope, but he doesn't say what it is. He proceeds to drift back and forth, his eyes on the ground, as if again unsure of what he's looking for. "Fell into it, actually," he clarifies. "Took me a couple days to get out."  
  
Furiosa stands back, unable to help without knowing what he's looking for, and humoring him in his secrecy.  
  
Finally he stops, studying a large flat rock. "Here." He motions toward it. "Help me move this."  
  
They haul the rock away from its unsteady seat, revealing a rough hole in the ground, just large enough for a person to fit through. He ties the rope to a nearby boulder, drops the other end into the gap, then carefully lowers himself down.  
  
Furiosa waits, unsure how far down he has to go. There's a clatter and a curse, and Furiosa peers down into the darkness.  
  
"Everything okay?" She calls.  
  
There's a beat of silence. "Yeah. 'S fine. Come on down." There's another clatter, then silence again. Furiosa raises a brow, but grips the rope and climbs down.  
  
She slides slowly down the rope, her eyes adjusting gradually to the dim light of the lantern he's lit. It's not too far down. She finds herself standing on some sort of raised platform, realizing only after she leaps off it that it's a wooden table, an array of smaller tables and chairs scattered on the ground around it.  
  
"Leg broke," he comments, examining one chair in the pile. He begins moving the furniture, putting it back where it presumably once belonged, balancing the three-legged chair carefully on its remaining feet.  
  
Furiosa takes a minute to light her own lantern, then turns slowly, holding it high to take in her surroundings. She finds herself not in some sort of cave system like she had originally expected, but in the middle of a walled room, all its furnishings, decorations, and various items mostly still intact (or at least still here). The walls look a little unstable, one side leaning slightly, another missing pieces where rocks had punched into it, but overall, it is whole.  
  
Nothing here is made from old, broken parts, nothing is time-worn and well-used from years in the Wasteland. This is a house from before the Fall, untouched except for the slide that buried it and Max's unexpected fall through the roof years ago.  
  
Max finishes rearranging the tables and chairs he had stacked under the hole in the roof last time he was here, trying to make it look more like it did when he first found it.  
  
Furiosa is silent for a long time, looking from one object to another. Some of these things she's not sure she's even seen before. "You didn't salvage any of this?"  
  
Max pauses. "Didn't… Don't really want to," he admits. Taken away and scattered across wasteland marketplaces, it loses its meaning. Here, all together, it feels like something significant.  
  
He walks up to an end table he had just replaced next to a couch, not in half-bad shape, and uprights a photo frame laying on the floor beside it. A young man in a graduation cap and gown smiles from inside the frame. "Seen others," he mumbles, "but not like this. They get picked clean quickly." He replaces a framed piece of art onto its hook on the wall. The glass in front of it is broken, and it hangs crookedly on the misshapen wall.   
  
Furiosa can't quite make out his expression in the darkness as he moves slowly, touching objects as he passes by them, sometimes righting a fallen item, but she's seen it before when he's done this, when he's come across certain items from the past. She doesn't have to see him to know the expression he wears. Fond, longing, and sad. She wonders what his life was like before the world broke him, why things from an age long gone seem to have so much meaning to him. Maybe he just longs for a different life.  
  
She turns her attention to the object he's now staring at, and leans down to study it, a black and silver box with a number of buttons and a dial on the front. She reaches out to wipe dust from its face.  
  
Max looks over at her. "Stereo."  
  
She looks at him questioningly.  
  
"Plays music."  
  
Furiosa nods. She had heard of such a thing. She straightens up. "So this is what it was like," she murmurs, "before." Everything new, everything manufactured.  
  
Max grunts.   
  
She had of course known what the world was like before the Fall, partly from stories told by the old Vuvalini, partly from the treasures she had seen in the underground mall Joe and his War Boys had found long before she became an Imperator. But the mall was already pretty well picked over by the time she first saw it. Almost everything that wasn't food, clothing, or car parts was either not worthy of scrutiny on a salvage run, or already taken and disassembled for other uses. Never had she seen so many things from the Old World still in their proper shape and place. And standing among it, just as it had been before everything changed, is entirely different from seeing bits and pieces of it, or hearing stories warped by time.  
  
She lifts her lantern again and moves on. She stops briefly in the kitchen, examining the stove, then the sink, then continues through to a nearby hallway. Max follows wordlessly.  
  
She finds bedrooms, mattresses fully intact and dressed in linens not sun-rotted or frayed. There's curtains, and closets full of clothes, and a dresser covered in small bottles and jars, and one room with clothing and books and a number of other things scattered around the floor. She finds a bathroom, and marvels at the idea of every house having running water, and enough of it to use freely.  
  
She's pondering a dress form and a sewing machine in a small workroom when Max reappears from wherever it was that he had been exploring.  
  
"It's a nice place to stay," he rumbles quietly. "Stayed a couple days last time I was here."  
  
Furiosa turns to look at him.   
  
"Couldn't go anywhere, actually," he adds. "Hurt my leg on the way down."  
  
She glances at his leg brace, though she knows that's not it. He had told her once that his knee got shot out long ago. He seems to be waiting for an answer from her, and she glances up toward the surface, where they left their vehicles. Is it safe to leave them unguarded?  
  
Max reads her concern easily enough. "They'll be safe. Don't think there's anyone here."  
  
Furiosa crinkles her brow and goes through a list of possible situations in her mind. Someone finds their vehicles. Breaks into them. Steals them. Someone finds the little hole in the ground. Sneaks up on them. Cuts the rope so they can't get out. She shakes the ideas away. They hadn't seen anyone in a couple days, and there was no sign that this area is inhabited.   
  
She smiles next at the idea of staying here, of playing at life like the world never fell. "Sure, why not? Wouldn't mind sleeping on a real bed."  
  
They gather a few supplies from their vehicles, and Furiosa hides Aegis a little farther in the steep gully. Max drapes a large tarp over his car, and Furiosa hangs one off the back of her truck so at least it's not visible from the mouth of the canyon. She takes her wheel, makes sure the back is securely locked, and they descend back into the buried house.  
  
"Should be some good food here." They had brought their own rations, but Max drops them in the living room and goes to open a couple of slatted doors around the corner from the kitchen. "'S what I lived on last time."  
  
Furiosa peers over his shoulder. There are cans and bags and boxes and jars. She reads the labels slowly. Various canned vegetables, beans, soups, and small cans of something called tuna. She sees various types of things called chips, cereal, jam, peanut butter, and Vegemite. Up on the top shelf there are boxes labeled sugar and flour and baking soda. Max grabs a selection of cans, but leaves the jars, bags, and boxes untouched.  
  
In the kitchen he looks at each can carefully while Furiosa continues to rummage through the pantry. None of the cans are dented, none are swollen. He looks at the date on the bottom of one can curiously, but it's meaningless when years have been long forgotten.  
  
As night falls and the meager light filtering through the hole in the ceiling turns faint and blue, they settle in. Max goes as far as setting up a small fire on the stovetop to heat their meal. He rummages through the kitchen, opening and closing drawers and cabinets casually until he finds a few pots and a can opener.  
  
Furiosa watches curiously. She would have expected him to look out of place in a setting like this, but is surprised by how naturally it seems to come to him. She joins him in the kitchen and shuffles through some cabinets and drawers herself, wondering at the number of utensils a single household apparently needed just to cook. She examines the microwave, then approaches the fridge and reaches out to it.  
  
Max puts out a hand to stop her, shaking his head with an urgent grunt. "Don't open that."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Smell." He grimaces. "Rotten food." He hadn't dared open it last time, and he wasn't about to take the risk this time.  
  
She laughs a little at his expression and studies the magnets and photos scattered across the fridge instead.   
  
She moves on eventually and is distracted by a bookcase in the living room when Max grunts a quiet "here," and she turns to see him lay two plates on the table. They sit down to eat their meal with clean dishes and shiny silverware and real glasses, and Max smiles at Furiosa's face when she takes her first bite of the tuna. She decides it's some kind of meat, but it is unlike anything she's ever tasted, and she can't quite decide if she likes it or not. She finishes it anyway and moves on to the baked beans spread neatly on her plate and the small bowl of soup. She recognizes the meat in the soup, if only vaguely. They had chickens back at the Green Place when she was a child, and occasionally got them in trade at the Citadel. The things Max calls _noodles_ , however, she's not quite so familiar with.  
  
When they're done and the dishes are stacked neatly in the sink, Furiosa selects a book from the bookshelf and settles down on the couch with it. Max roams around the house (occasionally righting fallen objects, but mostly still just looking with that expression on his face), but curiosity finally gets the better of him as Furiosa's brow creases more and more as she flips through the pages, and he joins her on the couch, peering over at the book in her hands.  
  
"Weird," she finally murmurs, and abandons the book in his hands before getting up and returning to the bookshelf. Max glances at the cover. _A Clockwork Orange_. He grunts and puts it aside. Furiosa selects another book, and returns to the couch with it. Max reads silently along with her.  
  
Furiosa is a faster reader than he, but he doesn't complain when she turns the page, simply picking up on the next one and making guesses to fill the half-page he missed. He's a bit out of practice at reading, and she had picked up the habit of availing herself of the library of books housed at the Citadel before they had left.   
  
Max reaches the end of the page before she turns it for once, and realizes when he gets there that the book had slowly lowered into her lap. He glances up to find her asleep, her head leaning back against the couch. He slips the book carefully out of her hands as her grip loosens, and places it over the arm of the couch, saving her spot, then slowly stands up. He fetches a blanket from one of the bedrooms and drapes it over her.  
  
There are nice beds to sleep in, but even the couch is a substantial improvement over the meager blankets they usually spread over the hard ground, and Max realizes the thought of being alone in a room of an old, dead house makes him a little uneasy. He settles back onto the wide couch, leans himself against the armrest, and is soon asleep.


	11. Breakdown

They stay longer in the buried house than either had anticipated, until the canned goods are gone and they're back to eating their own rations, the pile of dishes in the sink starting to get unwieldy. Finally they pack up and climb out to return to life on the road. Furiosa borrows the book she was reading, the only thing either of them takes from the house.  
  
They move on with no destination in mind, but they're barely a day out when Max hears a sudden clatter under the hood of his car, and he instinctively hits the brakes. Furiosa does a double take as he falls back behind her, and she swings around to meet him as he comes rolling to a stop.  
  
“What is it?” She leans out the window to look, but Max doesn’t need to say anything. Going around the front of his car and opening the hood is answer enough. He leans over, takes a look, and his suspicions are quickly confirmed.  
  
“Drive belt’s gone,” he grunts over his shoulder at her.  
  
She gives a nod and starts back along his path. “I’ll go see if it’s salvageable.” If they were lucky, it just threw the belt without breaking it. But their luck usually had other ideas.  
  
Max is inspecting other bits of his engine when Furiosa parks beside him and gets out with the broken belt in hand. “Split,” she tells him. “It didn’t shred, at least.”  
  
“Mmh.” Max inspects the broken belt. The edges are a bit rough, but most of the belt is intact. “Don’t have another.” He digs around in the back of his car and comes up with an old leather belt, its buckle long gone. He cuts the rough edges off the drive belt and snakes it around between the pulleys and wheels on the front of the engine. “Hold,” he grunts at Furiosa. She pulls the belt tight as Max carefully measures out and cuts a short length of leather to fill the gap. He takes the belt, sits back on the fender, pulls some thin leather cord out of a pocket (a precious commodity that he saves for just this kind of thing) and begins carefully stitching the edges together.  
  
Furiosa watches him quietly for a moment. Making do with what you’ve got is the key to surviving out here, and Max seems to have that down to an art. He didn't even have to put a lot of thought into this particular fix.  
  
She leans against the fender beside him. “You done this before?”  
  
Max looks up from the belt in his hands and gives a one-sided smile. “Many times,” he replies, echoing their exchange from a few years ago. Furiosa laughs a little.   
  
She’s done her fair share of jerry-rigging emergency repairs, but at the Citadel they always had a relative surplus of replacement parts, so it was rarely necessary unless she was out on the road. She wonders what he does when he can’t fix a part. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do but replace what’s busted. “Have you ever been stranded?”  
  
“Many times,” he repeats.  
  
“What do you do?”  
  
“Walk. Catch a ride, sometimes.” He continues making nice, even stitches in the belt. “Find a replacement.”  
  
She doesn’t know what other answer she expected. There’s not much of another choice if you're out in the middle of the wasteland without a working vehicle. She’s honestly surprised he’s managed to stay alive this long, though. The wasteland is already a hard enough place to live, and it is certainly not kind to wanderers.  
  
“Stole a car a few times,” he continues.   
  
Furiosa’s not particularly surprised. “Have you always been on the road?”  
  
Max is silent for a long while. “No,” he answers shortly. Furiosa closes her mouth against the next question in her head. She must have touched a nerve.  
  
Max continues stitching for a while, working the needle slowly through the tough material of the belts. “Grew up normal,” he finally says, trying to divert his mind to easier thoughts than what initially flashed through it. He doesn’t quite know if there is a _normal_ in the wasteland, and he doesn’t tell her that his own upbringing had been before the world truly fell. “Peaceful.”  
  
Furiosa just listens, always curious to hear more about him. He volunteers the information so rarely.  
  
He thinks quietly for a moment. “Had friends. We played in the streets when we were kids. My mom would always yell at us.” He smiles a little. “Went for walks with my dad on the…” he was about to say _beach_ , but cuts himself off. “He taught me the first things I knew about cars.”  
  
“Early start, huh?”  
  
Max nods. “Didn’t have much need for it at the time. But it helped when I finally did need it.” He clears his throat. “Learned the rest on my own.” He settles back into silence.  
  
“War Boys taught me most of what I know,” Furiosa says, seeking to keep the conversation going. “I mean, we had cars at the Green Place. I knew how to drive… Could ride a bike as soon as I could reach. But our focus was on growing. We didn’t need many blackthumbs.”   
  
Max looks up from his task. “Sounds nice.”  
  
“It was,” she answers quietly, then clears her own throat. “Where did you grow up?”  
  
Max shakes his head. “Don’t know where it is anymore.” The town’s name would mean nothing to her anyway. He ties a tight knot in the leather cord and starts on the other edge. When he's finished, he gives the repaired belt a few hard tugs. “Should hold for a little while. A new one would be better, though.”  
  
“We’ll check in the next town.”  
  
She helps him fit the belt in place and adjust the tension. When it’s done, he gets in, starts his car, and revs the engine a few times.  
  
“Holding?”  
  
“Looks good!” Furiosa yells over the sound of the engine. She closes the hood, and Max gives her a little thumbs up.  
  


 

* * *

  
  
The town they find is not on Max’s map, but they come across it within a day, and it looks big enough to support a good sized marketplace. They hide their vehicles a little way outside of the town, and bring their salvaged finds and anything else they don't need for trade.  
  
The marketplace is varied. Furiosa inspects a few bins piled with various car parts. She finds an array of spark plugs, hoses and clamps, some windshield wipers, even a battery weighing down the bottom of one box, and one belt in somewhat good condition, but definitely the wrong size. She glances up to shake her head at Max, only to find him no longer behind her. Standing up, she looks around and finally spots him wandering onward, his eyes sharp as he checks the other shops for anything he can use. She sees an old merchant approach him before Max does, and watches her grasp his arm. Max twitches, just barely holding back his reflex to strike out at the potential threat, but the merchant seems unfazed and drags the suddenly bewildered-looking man into the next shop over.  
  
"Got just the thing you want, sonny," the woman tells him matter-of-factly as she draws him onward.  
  
"Uh…" Max glances over his shoulder, but not quite in time to catch Furiosa's eye before they disappear into the shop. Furiosa stifles a smile and moves on to the next stall.  
  
She has scoured through a few merchants' wares by the time she sees Max's boots step up beside her as she examines a table spread with an impressive array of odds and ends.   
  
"There you are."  
  
"Mm."  
  
She looks up to see him stuffing something in his bag, a large piece of some kind of dark-colored jerky clamped between his teeth.  
  
He tears off a piece of the jerky and holds it out to her when he's finished putting things away. "Beef?" His voice holds a hint of pride at his find.  
  
"…Beef?" She echoes, taking it from him almost hesitantly.  
  
"Mm, yeah. From a cow." He takes a bite of the jerky and savors it. "Didn't know there were any of them still around."  
  
Furiosa tries the piece he had handed her and hums appreciatively as she chews.   
  
"Something specific?" Max asks, trailing his hand through the items on the table. He picks up an old pair of plastic safety scissors and studies them.  
  
"Something for this joint." She holds up her metal hand and flexes it a few times, demonstrating the grinding noise it still makes.  
  
Max hums thoughtfully and sorts through the pieces again. He holds up an old cigar tube, and Furiosa takes it from him.   
  
"Hm, no, it would need too much reinforcing." She taps it against the table. The metal is thin. She puts it down and picks up a short length of metal cable and adds it wordlessly to the couple of nuts and bolts in her hand.  
  
Max tries a few other suggestions as Furiosa collects a couple more pieces here and there that he can't quite figure out what she plans to do with. She finally unearths an old nut cracker tool, half of one of the handles already broken off. She tests the joint a few times, then gives a nod and adds it to her little collection. Max steps out of her way, taking another small bite of his jerky as she heads to the merchant lounging in the shade.  
  
The merchant leans forward with interest as she lays out the pieces she had selected and digs through her own bag for something to offer. He peers curiously into the bag.  
  
"How about that?"  
  
Furiosa glances at the gas mask he's indicated. "Not worth that pile of junk."  
  
"Ah, but that happens to be a pile of junk that you just spent quite some time picking out, so… how about it?"  
  
Furiosa shakes her head. "I'd imagine it's also a pile of junk that nobody else happens to want, so how about a fair price?" She looks at the few bags of seeds she had brought from the Citadel, but those were worth a lot out here, too, and they don't seem like this merchant's particular style. She holds up a sizable stack of small circuit boards they had found decorating the inside of one of the raider cars that attacked them not long after they had set out from the Citadel. "All these for them." She doesn't know what they'd be good for these days, but this merchant seems to be a collector of odd junk, and her suspicion isn't wrong.   
  
He considers them for a moment, then gives a nod. "Deal." He takes the proffered circuit boards and studies them with interest. Furiosa pockets her new acquisitions, and turns to rejoin Max.  
  
"Alright. New belt?"  
  
Max clears his throat. "Haven't seen one."  
  
"Did you check those shops?" She points across the road.  
  
"Not yet." He turns to follow her over there, still munching in tiny bites.  
  
In the end, they leave the marketplace empty-handed other than Furiosa's new parts and Max's beef jerky treat. They set up camp where they hid their vehicles, and Furiosa sits down to begin tinkering with her hand. She got enough parts to replace most of the damaged finger along with the joint, and she sets to work dismantling her prosthetic.  
  
She glances up to see Max open his bag, revealing several more pieces of the jerky.  
  
"How much of that did you buy?" Furiosa's voice is perhaps more surprised than it should be.  
  
"All of it," he answers bluntly.  
  
She doesn't ask how much he spent on that. A good chunk of the salvage he had brought in his pack is distinctly missing, but she decides not to comment. If it's important to him, he can trade for what he wants. He reaches out and offers her an entire piece. Smiling, she takes it, and he moves over to join her, sitting down quietly to offer extra hands if she needs them.


	12. Salvaged

They move on, but take it at a leisurely pace. They’re half a day out when Max spots the remains of a vehicle half-buried in sand next to a rock face. He motions to Furiosa out his window, and they turn toward it.  
  
“Might be worth some salvage,” he tells her as they stop and get out to look. The wreck is burnt out, an intense fire having scorched away the paint from the roof, but it is somewhat hidden, and doesn’t look like it has been picked clean past what had burned. The chances of finding exactly the right size belt in it are slim (and the chances of said belt being in usable shape are even more slim) but Max rarely passes up the chance to collect some salvage when he finds it. When survival depends on what little you have, you tend to gather as much as you can get.  
  
He’s careful - he always is. He checks it over thoroughly before he even touches it, but it’s a fairly unassuming wreck, and doesn’t look like it’ll be worth much after all.   
  
Furiosa opens the back of her truck and finds a crate to gather parts in, when an explosion makes her drop it in surprise. She scrambles out of the truck, always ready for a fight if someone has attacked, but fearing she knows exactly what had happened. Her eyes go immediately to the wreck, and she stands frozen for a brief moment, her eyes wide. The hood of the car is blown off, the engine compartment smoking. She scans quickly for Max and finds him lying back against the rock face, slumped on the ground, unmoving.  
  
“Max!” She rushes to him and drops to her knees beside him. He doesn't respond, but as she puts her hand on his chest, she feels it rise minutely. Her hand comes away bloody. There's blood on his face and smeared on the rock behind his head, and she swears under her breath. "Wake up. Shit, Max, you have to wake up!"   
  
She checks the back of his head, feeling gently through the wet smear of blood for any sign of broken bone. It could be fractured, but she can't tell. She tilts his face up toward her. He finally awakes, slowly, disoriented, his ears ringing. He groans and looks at her through squinted eyes, then slowly flexes, his face contorting with the effort.  
  
“Hey, no. Don’t try to move.” She grips his shoulder and pushes him back as he tries to sit up. His hand goes to his stomach, and he gasps in pain, falling back against the rock face weakly. Blood is soaking through the fabric of his shirt in patches across his torso.   
  
"Let me see." She puts her hand over the back of his, pulling lightly. He reluctantly lets her pull his hand away, and she lifts the hem of his shirt carefully.  
  
“Rigged to the hood,” he groans, wincing in pain. “Hidden. Didn’t see it…”  
  
Furiosa shakes her head. “This is bad.” Her brow creases in worry. His stomach and chest are covered in cuts. Most are small, but she knows there is a bit of shrapnel buried under each. It’s the worst on his stomach, the wounds much more concentrated. She can barely see through the mess of blood, but she thinks she can make out one larger gash, where a big piece of metal must have hit him. She feels it gently to see if the metal is still in there, but Max yells at the slightest touch, and she pulls her hand back. “I can’t… I don’t know if I can do anything about this…” She can pull shrapnel out if she has to, but if any of the pieces went too deep or punctured his gut, she knows his time is short and it's out of her power to help him.  
  
Max groans again, letting his head fall back against the rock face behind him. It figures it would be some wasteland trap that would finally get him.  
  
“No, you're not giving up. Come on, we’ve got to go.” She pulls his arm over her shoulders and hauls him to his feet.   
  
Furiosa leaves Aegis behind. She manages to get Max into the passenger seat of the Interceptor, and takes off. Aegis is a safer vehicle, but the Interceptor is faster, and that's what matters right now. Plus, she knows this car is everything to Max. It was hard not to notice the care and love and determination he had put into restoring it. She'd rather lose her Aegis than see Max lose this thing.  
  
She heads back to the town they had visited the other day. It's the closest place she knows of where there might be help. Max had been barely aware when she set out, groaning painfully and trying to shift in the seat, but by the time she sees the town in the distance, he's unresponsive, even when she shakes his shoulder and tells him to stay awake. She almost stops, worried that she's lost him, but shakes her head and speeds up, risking the shaking of the road over the loss of precious time. She reaches over to try to find his pulse, but her fingers are too ill-practiced and shaking, and the vibrations of the car make it impossible to feel.  
  
She screeches to a halt right on the edge of the town and bursts from the car.  
  
"I need a doctor! Now!"  
  
The people are wary of her, but one has the sense to go running. Furiosa rushes to check on Max, her fingers fumbling at his neck until they feel the faint pulse of his heartbeat, and she takes a shaky breath. She looks up at the crowd slowly growing on the edge of the town. Each second ticks by like a minute, and Furiosa starts forward to find a damn doctor herself when the one who went running finally returns with a man in a beat-up bowler hat and a tie (out of place against the grunginess of the rest of his clothes). He stops on the edge of the crowd, a short distance from the car and looks at her a little smugly.  
  
"He's dying." She motions to Max quickly, passed out in the passenger seat. "Shrapnel to the stomach. I need help."  
  
"Yeah? What do you got in return for my services?"  
  
"Guzzoline, food, water, ammunition, parts. You name it."  
  
He looks a little skeptical, then leans to the side, looking past her to the car. "Don't see no goods."  
  
Furiosa suppresses a snarl. _There's no time for this! He's dying!_ "I've got them in my truck. I had to leave it. Once I get it, you can have—"  
  
"No goods, no help."  
  
Furiosa glares at him. "I'll work. Whatever you need, until the debt's paid off."  
  
"Nah, I got my aides."  
  
Her mind races. "The car," she offers, motioning to the Interceptor. He'd hate her for this, but she'd do anything to help him get it back, by trade or by force.  
  
The man looks the car over. It's a pretty thing and a good offer, but saving a man with a gut full of shrapnel is a difficult task, and he can’t help but feel she has more to offer. Besides, what’s a car to him when he’s got a nice little setup right here? It's only worth trade to him, and nobody who comes through this town could likely afford it. “I want something I can use,” he answers dismissively.  
  
"He'll die if you don't help him," she pleads, trying to appeal to whatever shriveled sense of decency he may have.   
  
"People die every day. Not my fault." The doctor looks distinctly unimpressed.  
  
Her chest is almost painfully tight. She can't imagine losing Max now. Can't imagine just sitting by and watching him die, unable to do anything. She'd try, of course, but part of her knows the situation is far worse than she can possibly handle, and Max would be gone. 

She grinds her teeth, desperation taking over. "I'll do whatever you want," She grits out, then stresses: " _anything_."  
  
"Got no use for a woman, sweetheart."  
  
She looks back at Max, inching closer to death by the minute, if it's not already too late. "You need a blood donor? He's O-negative."  
  
The doctor perks up, and Furiosa feels sick for having said what she just said. But it was the only thing that caught his interest, and if it means keeping Max alive…  
  
"Save him now, and if I don't deliver your goods, you can take his blood as payment."  
  
The doctor gives a nod and a grin, and motions to a few people behind him. They hurry forward and pull Max out of the passenger seat. Furiosa pushes her way in, helping to lift him, making sure they don't jostle him too badly. She tries not to look at the blood soaking the front of his shirt.  
  
They stop her when they get to the doctor's dirty little surgery room, and she stands back at the door, her breath caught in her throat, praying to the Many Mothers of the past that Max will pull through. He has to.  
  
She paces outside the door in agitation, waiting, listening. Never in her life have hours passed so slowly. She hears the doctor barking orders at his aides, asking for retraction or a clamp to stop a bleeder. She can barely make out the quiet clink of metal hitting a tray, piece after piece of shrapnel removed and discarded. She eventually has to force herself to stop pacing, and leans against the wall, willfully slowing her breaths and trying to release the tension in her muscles.  
  
The doctor seems almost surprised to see her when he finally emerges from the room, wiping blood from his hands. She looks at him urgently.  
  
"Don't worry yourself, he's alive. Got all the shrapnel I could find. Stitched up his gut some. It's up to him to pull through now."  
  
She lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding.  
  
"But I still expect compensation if he doesn't. I've done the work. You owe me." He looks at her pointedly, then turns and heads away, leaving her alone to wait to see Max again.


	13. Worry

The doctor refuses to help her go back for Aegis - he had taken the Interceptor as collateral along with Max - and Furiosa fears he may prize Max's blood more than he'd want the supplies she has to offer. She hates herself for giving away Max's secret, for risking his freedom, knowing what it had cost him last time, and for offering him like she had any right to. She's betrayed him. Flat out betrayed him.  
  
She powers forward anyway, after a night of restless sleep, trying to distract herself from her worries and the awful image of Max when they had finally brought him out of the surgery room. Too pale, too still, his face eerily peaceful. She talks to people in the town, anybody she can find who owns a car, or a motorcycle, or anything. Eventually she finds someone willing to take her to her truck for a reasonable price, and they leave within the hour. It seems a much longer ride than she remembers it being, when she rushed through the desert, Max dying beside her. But they reach her truck just after the sun sets, and she's pleased to find Aegis still there and undamaged. She hands over the guzzoline she promised to the woman who helped her, and heads back to the dingy town where Max waits.  
  
The negotiations are heated - the doctor knows the stakes are high and he can ask for a lot - but Furiosa holds her ground as best she can. At least now she's just bargaining for his freedom rather than his life (though she thinks they might be of the same weight to Max). It removes most of the urgency, at least. The doctor is not above reiterating that he'd be perfectly happy keeping Max when he doesn't like what she offers. He knows how much she doesn't want to leave her companion to that life.  
  
The doctor grins. "And you'll give me extra if you want me to keep him drugged up so he doesn't feel the pain for a while."  
  
Furiosa's jaw tightens, but she knows she should feel grateful that he has any kind of drugs for Max at all. She doesn't ask what they are. "Twenty gallons of water for the drugs."  
  
"Thirty. It's not easy to get ones strong enough to knock down a pain like this."  
  
Furiosa doesn't trust him. After they reach a final agreement, she withholds her end of the deal until Max is on his feet, alive and well. She has a distinct feeling that this man will stop caring about his job the moment he gets his payment for it. The doctor begrudgingly agrees to her terms, but in retribution refuses to let her see Max until he's released. Furiosa wants to fight it, wants to be there with Max, to make sure this man doesn't hurt him or do anything wrong, but Max's life is in his hands, and recovery from what he just went through is certainly not something she can handle. She needs this man to be _willing_ to take care of Max, not angry and possibly vindictive. She grits her teeth and agrees, but it's not going to stop her from keeping a close eye on the man, in whatever way she can. She won't just take his word that Max is alive and healing and not hanging by his feet, being bled out for the sake of another.  
  
She counts the days, one by one. On the third day, the doctor comes to her and complains that Max put up quite a fight when he finally regained consciousness. He hurt some of the doctor's people, made a mess of his hospital. Tore some of his stitches, too. They had to restrain him to put them back in. Furiosa grimaces, knowing how terrified Max must have been to wake up in that place after days of probably being drugged out of his mind, not knowing where he was or what had happened. Not knowing if he was a prisoner again.   
  
"That wouldn't have happened if I had been there," she tells him with a forced calm.  
  
"Yeah, well, too late to be crying over that." The doctor proceeds to list off the damage Max did, and in the end, Furiosa has to throw more into their deal (nearly the last of what they have) to compensate the man for his added trouble.  
  
She spends her time in the town, pacing the streets or loitering by her truck at first before she finally decides she needs to occupy herself with something other than worrying, and she finds work. She picks up odd jobs here and there: fixing a truck, carrying crates to and from the marketplace, helping an elderly shopkeep with her store. The woman appreciates her help so much that she offers to keep her on for as long as she needs. The pay is meager, but enough. Food and water to get by on, and a little extra to stash away for later. Furiosa thinks perhaps she should find something more profitable to do to rebuild their dwindling supplies, but she wants to stay close to town, and the doctor's little hospital is only a short distance from the marketplace.  
  
Four days. Five. She corners one of the doctor's aides when she sees one, and bribes him to keep a close eye on Max and tell her how he's doing. The man looks threatened almost as much as bribed, but she doesn't care, as long as it gets the job done. He has news for her right off the bat, and delivers it with a certain amount of fear.  
  
"Not looking good. There's, ah… something wrong with his liver."  
  
"What?" She presses. "Is there something you can do?"  
  
"We're, uh…" He cringes a little. "We're going to go back in and see if the doc missed anything. That's all I know."  
  
She wants to choke more information out of him, and he looks like he knows it. But she steps back with barely-contained tension and lets him continue on his way. She just has to trust that they will do what they can.  
  
Seven days. The doctor finally comes to her and says there were complications, but doesn't specify past that, even when she presses. He keeps assuring her he's alive and healing, but won't tell her what state he's in, or how he's doing. She expects him to double his costs for the second surgery, and fears she won't be able to pay him enough, but either he had made a mistake the first time around and his pride won't let him admit it, or he's just enjoying keeping her in the dark too much to tell her what he had to do and demand a higher price.  
  
Her contact inside the hospital tells her it's too soon to tell. Max doesn't look good, but, the man admits, nobody ever does after a surgery. She wants to take back her terms from before, wants to give the doctor what they agreed on as payment, in exchange for getting to see Max again. Though part of her fears to see the state he's in, she does want to know, and thinks perhaps she might be able to help in his recovery. And - she tries not to let her mind wander down this path, but can't always keep herself from it - if he's going to die, even after all this, she doesn't want him to die alone.   
  
However, she's seen enough of this doctor and heard enough stories from people she's met in town to confirm her suspicion that as soon as he got his payment, his motivation to keep Max alive and help him recover would drop like a stone. He's good at his trade, but he's driven by greed. Once he had his payment, what would be the point of putting more effort into Max?  
  
Ten days. Fifteen. Her contact becomes scarce. She knows they took out part of Max's liver, and that he was back on his feet a matter of days after his second surgery (she wasn't sure if that was entirely a good idea) but past that, she's received little information, other than a stomach-churning medical description of his level of pain and difficulties with basic tasks. She worries that something more has happened when her contact stops appearing altogether. She knows Max heals quickly, but she doesn't know how long it would take him to recover from something like this.  
  
"Don't bottle it up," the old shopkeep she's been helping says, noticing her growing frustration.  
  
She beats a piece of sheet metal around the back of the shop into a dented, crumpled mess.  
  
By the twentieth day, she's thinking seriously about going in and getting Max out of there. She's wracked her brain for memories of how long it takes to recover from a major surgery. She hasn't seen a lot of it in times she can remember, and few this serious, but she's pretty sure most people should be on the better side of healing by now. Max certainly should be. And if he was already on his feet a few days after his surgery, he should be now. The fact that she hasn't heard anything more makes her think he's either dead, or something else has happened to slow his recovery, or he's fine and the doctor is keeping her in the dark so he can try to get a bit of blood out of Max before she realizes what's going on.  
  
If he's dead, she at least wants to know. If there have been further complications, she'll do what she can for Max, but doesn't trust this man to take care of him any longer anyway. She'll drive as far as she needs to to find better help for him. If he's holding Max for his blood… Well, a gun to the head seems to her like it would be a perfectly good way to deal with the doctor in that case.  
  
She starts running through plans in her head. She'll give it a couple more days, then gather the guns and ammunition and be prepared for anything. She figures her best chance would be to sneak in at night. Maybe she could even get him out without a fight. If not, well, hopefully Max can carry his own weight and use a gun, if it comes to that. She adds a couple extras to her mental list to bring for him.  
  
When the doctor finally shows up and tells her Max is well enough to leave and demands his payment, she relaxes considerably, twenty-some days of tightness starting to ease out of her shoulders and neck. She moves quickly, as if this chance will disappear if she doesn't. She stacks the payment near the hospital, a sizable pile of crates and cans of goods, and stands by, waiting for them to release Max.  
  
Finally he staggers out, squinting into the sun, supported on each side by the doctor's aides. He's quick to shake them off with a quiet growl, and walks ahead on his own.  
  
She approaches him rapidly, her flesh arm reaching out to him. Max is slightly taken aback as she grips the back of his head and presses her forehead to his. He has only ever seen this gesture, never been part of it; he and Furiosa care about each other, but they've never been very physical with each other. He knows enough to understand the meaning of it, though, and he doesn't take it lightly. Carefully, he reaches up and cups the back of her head, leaning into the embrace, his eyes slipping shut.


	14. Recovery

Max is quiet at their camp outside of town that night. He’s often quiet, but it’s always a comfortable silence. Now it feels to Furiosa almost tense. She fears that he knows she had offered his blood and his freedom in exchange for his life. She doesn't know if he would consider that a fair trade. It's not like she could have asked his opinion on the matter at the time, but she has a feeling (with another pang of guilt) that Max might have taken death over being subjected to that again. His last encounter with captivity had left him wild and feral, barely a man. She doesn’t know what a second time would do to him.  
  
"I'm sorry," she murmurs after nearly an hour of silence.  
  
Max is brought back to reality and looks at her with surprise. "For what?"  
  
So he doesn't know. Furiosa is silent for a long moment, looking down at the ground instead of him. She can't bring herself to admit it to him. She doesn't want to lose his trust. "…For not being there. When you woke up."  
  
He looks at her like he can tell there's something more. But he shakes his head. "You couldn't have. Doc said no."  
  
Furiosa nods wordlessly, and they fall back into silence for a moment.  
  
"Was going a bit crazy in there," he mumbles. "Felt like forever. That guy kept calling me Mr., uh." He pauses, shifts uncomfortably, "Mr. O-negative." (Furiosa cringes slightly.) "I thought he was gonna… keep me there." He hadn't liked that man, and not just because of the name. He had felt more like a prisoner than a patient.  
  
"I wouldn't let that happen." She was desperate when she made that offer, she tells herself. It was a necessity in order to save his life. Even if that doctor had refused everything she could offer and took Max instead, she was ready to get him out by force if she had to.  
  
He gives her a grateful look, but Furiosa isn't sure she deserves it. She thinks back to her worry as she waited for Max to recover. The fear that that doctor _would_ try to keep Max, and the fear of what was happening after his second surgery. She never did get the full story about that. "What happened in there?”  
  
Max shakes his head, his brow creasing. "Got infected. Had to, uh. Cut me open again." His hand goes reflexively to the fresh scar on his stomach. Despite the liberal use of alcohol as an antiseptic (the daily alcohol washes of his wounds had _not_ endeared the doctor to Max in the least), trying to do surgery in the wasteland is practically asking for infection. Antibiotics are long gone, and Max knows he was lucky that the infection hadn't gone septic, that it had been possible for the doctor to go in and cut it out himself. But he shudders at the memory of his panic as they fitted a medical mask over his face, its tube connected to a bottle of acrid-smelling liquid. The pain in his gut had become nearly unbearable by that point. He had known there was a good chance that it would be all for nothing. Or even that he would never wake up again.  
  
“They told me they took part of your liver,” Furiosa says, “but he wouldn’t tell me how you were.”  
  
“Mm. He wouldn’t say, but I think he left a piece of shrapnel. I started going downhill quickly. He said there was no saving it.” His hand still rests on his stomach, the entire lower half of his torso wrapped tightly in bandages for support. “Was sick for days. Feverish, hallucinating… Couldn’t keep anything down.” He had vomited until there was nothing left to throw up, and then was left dry heaving until the pain in his gut was so bad he’d nearly pass out. He needed an IV just to keep him alive, but he ripped it out repeatedly in his feverish hallucinations, the feeling of a needle in his skin too familiar, too reminiscent of his time as a blood bag.  
  
Furiosa sucks in a sympathetic breath. She’s even more glad now that Max is still with her.  
  
“Hurt like a son of a bitch,” he continues, staring at the ground between them. They hadn't given him drugs to knock out the pain after the second surgery. They just strapped him down and let him suffer through it. ("Not after the mess you made last time," the doctor had told him as he shook and pleaded for some relief. "Money's run out, anyway.") It was only made worse by the fact that he was still going through withdrawal from the first round of pain killers. Max didn’t know what he had been given, but he knew it hit him hard.  
  
Furiosa watches the crumple in his forehead slowly deepen, and seeks quickly to interrupt whatever thoughts are causing it. “I’m glad you’re still here. I thought for a while I had lost you. I don’t know what I would have done…” Her voice fades out. She does know, but doesn’t want to think about it. She would have carried on, hard though it may have been, just as she has done every time she lost someone in her life. Maybe she would have gone back to the Citadel and left life on the road as a memory of the time she had with Max, or maybe continued on and taken Max’s lone, wandering lifestyle as her own.  
  
Max looks at her softly. It’s still a little alien to him, having someone who cares about what happens to him. He’s grateful for it. For her.  
  
Furiosa clears her throat, seeking now to chase away the thoughts that haunt her. “We’re low on supplies.”  
  
Max’s eyes shift down to the ground again, and he nods.  
  
“I had to offer… a lot for the doctor to help you.”  
  
Max grunts. he’s not particularly surprised. “What do we have left?”  
  
“Ten days of food, enough guzzoline to drive maybe half that long if we’re careful. We only have a few days of water left, though.”  
  
“Hm. And to trade?”  
  
“I already traded all our salvage for guzz and water. We still have most of the seeds from the Citadel left. Some of the food we do have left is dried fruit. It would be easy to trade for a larger quantity of something else.”  
  
Max nods. “We can make do, except for water. First priority.”  
  
“I bought out all the water in the marketplace. Nobody else is letting go of what they have. Food for trade is scarce, too.”  
  
“Then we leave.” He doesn’t particularly want to stick around here any longer anyway.  
  
Furiosa nods in agreement. It doesn’t matter how much food and guzzoline they have if they don’t find more water soon. “Know any place?”  
  
Max hums and fishes around in a pocket for his map. He studies it silently, then gives a nod. “Few towns within a day or two. Should find something.” He puts his map away again and hoists himself up, using his arms when his core muscles fail, a grimace crossing his face. He leans back against his car for a moment once he’s on his feet, his hand pressed to his stomach.  
  
Furiosa watches him with concern, but doesn’t say anything about it. Max trudges across their camp and gathers some kindling for a fire. He lights the meager flame between their vehicles and hovers by it for warmth for a while. They’re silent again, but it is more comfortable now. Furiosa doesn’t know if she’ll ever lose the guilt of offering something that wasn’t hers to offer, but at least she knows now that Max isn’t angry at her. After a while, he moves his sleeping blanket toward the fire and lies down. Furiosa watches quietly as he stares into the flickering flames, until his eyes drift closed and his breathing slows and deepens. She continues to watch over him well after he’s asleep.  
  
In the morning, she can tell getting up is difficult for him. He holds his core stiff, flexing as little as possible, and moves slightly awkwardly. He tries to hide the discomfort on his face as he carries on as normal, packing up their camp in preparation to leave, but when he has to grip the roof of his car and pull himself up after he sits in his driver’s seat to pack some things in back, Furiosa finally speaks up.  
  
“Maybe we should head back to the Citadel until you’ve recovered more.”  
  
Max shakes his head. “I’ve had worse.”  
  
Her brows rise. “Worse than having part of your liver removed?”  
  
He grunts noncommittally.  
  
“I’m serious, though, Max. If we get into something, are you going to be able to hold your own?” It’s not just Max at risk here, but both of them. They depend on each other.  
  
He looks at her seriously and gives a nod. “You don’t have to worry about me. I can handle it.”  
  
Furiosa sighs. She’s never really been one to worry, but Max seems to bring it out in her. She has to remember that he’s been doing this for years, and she’s sure he has managed through some pretty bad situations before. A little smirk crosses her face suddenly. “You’d better. I’m not saving your ass if you can’t keep up.”  
  
Max smirks back. “Yeah you are.”  
  
“…Yeah. I am.”


	15. I've Got Your Back

The next town they find has water for trade, but not much. They buy all they can from the traders there, plus a little extra guzzoline, and ask around if there is a place nearby where they can find more. They hop from town to town, trading for water here, guzzoline there, exchanging food types. Max finally finds a new belt for his car. Furiosa flags down a trading caravan in between towns. They pay very well for a few bags of seeds from the Citadel, and finally Max and Furiosa feel like they have enough that they can relax for a little while.  
  
They both know they should keep moving, that their supplies aren’t going to stop dwindling just because they take a break, but they’re tired, and the cliff face that presents itself on their horizon offers comfortable alcoves to hide in, so they decide to settle down for a bit. They have enough supplies to make it back to the Citadel, but haven’t yet decided if that’s what they want to do. Furiosa misses the people, but isn’t going to resort straight to leaning on them for supplies as soon as she and Max run low. She came out here in part to escape the Citadel and see what Max’s life is like. Max is in no particular hurry to go back either, and in fact seems to have his sights instead on a large town a couple days away where he says they can find work. Furiosa still doubts that he should be up and fighting and working, but she’s not going to baby him over it.  
  
Max double checks the condition of his new drive belt, and while he’s there, just keeps on going and checks over the rest of his car, piece by piece.  
  
Furiosa can tell he loves that car more than anything. She's seen War Boys who get attached to their cars, but it doesn't have the same feel as it does with Max. She can't help but feel that it's got some greater significance to him than just being the only thing he owns in this world. It's got some connection to times long past, and it’s the closest thing to home that he really knows.  
  
When he finally steps back from his car, apparently satisfied with the state of it after some quick tuneups, he comes back to sit next to Furiosa in the fading light. He still holds his core a bit stiff, lowering himself to the ground slowly, and she tries not to let it bother her; he’s managed just fine with it so far.   
  
“Is this what your life is always like out here?” She asks generally.  
  
Max is silent for a moment. “No.”  
  
Furiosa doesn’t prompt further, but after a moment, Max realizes she’s expecting more.  
  
“Don’t normally move around so much.” He’s always on the run, but driving for days on end uses guzzoline, and on his own he can’t carry nearly as much as Furiosa’s truck can. “Find a place, stay a while, move on when I can’t stay any more.” He builds temporary homes for himself here and there, but he never truly settles down. He doubts he ever will. That’s why Furiosa is out here with him, rather than him living at the Citadel with her.   
  
It’s so much safer there, more stable. It’s not a constant struggle for survival. He doesn’t have to wake ready to fight or flee at the slightest sound, doesn’t even have to worry about where his next meal will come from, or if something will break and strand him in the middle of nowhere. But he just can’t settle down, even there. The need to keep running overpowers all else. He’s been a drifter too long to stop now.  
  
He goes back in his mind and considers her question again. “Also, don’t often get hurt that bad.” He pauses. He’s been through some pretty rough spots, but that was one of his worst. “Wouldn’t have survived that… without you.” Had he been on his own, he would have eventually dragged himself up, gotten in his car, and driven. Maybe there was some small chance that sheer determination would have gotten him through it, kept him awake, but he doubts he actually would have been able to stay conscious long enough to get himself back to the town and find a doctor.   
  
His life has always been a series of really bad luck, sometimes followed by just enough good luck to pull him out of it. For the last few years, he realizes, Furiosa has largely been the face of that good luck. He’s lost count of how many times she’s saved his life, starting with those four days on the Fury Road. Hell, it was her escape from the Citadel that had gotten Max out of his own imprisonment in the first place. As long as he’d been following in the wake of her life, he’d always had that little bit of luck to pull him out of bad spots. He wonders what it means now that she’s riding along with his lifestyle. He’d dragged them through some tough spots since they set out. If Furiosa is his good luck, maybe he is her bad luck.  
  
Furiosa bumps his shoulder with her own, and he realizes he’d been spacing out.  
  
“I’ve got your back,” she says, and a little smile creeps across Max’s face. She’s still back on the subject of Max’s injury, but her words mean more.  
  
“’N I’ve got yours.”  
  
It’s not so different, he realizes. His lifestyle is higher-risk than hers usually was back at the new Citadel, but they’ve still got each other, and they’ll always be watching each other’s backs.   
  


* * *

  
  
Furiosa almost could have lost track of how long they had been out here, if it weren't for her hair. She catches a glimpse of her reflection in her cup of water in the morning. It's not long, per se, but it's longer than she'd like. She runs her fingers through it, grabs a handful at the back of her head, and huffs a sigh. She doesn't know why anybody would bother with long hair out here. It could only be a pain to deal with, and not a good idea if you happen to get into a brawl. You really don't want an opponent to be able to grab your hair in the middle of a fight.  
  
She digs through her bag of personal items, and pulls out a rare treasure - a hand-operated manual hair clipper. She had an electric one she could use with one of the generators in the Citadel (and that miraculously still worked), but out here that wasn't an option. It’s a little beaten and rough - the handles rattle, the guard is partially broken and wired on - but it still works.  
  
She rinses her hair a couple times in a shallow bowl to get some of the dust and dirt out, rubs it dry with a blanket, then goes over to where Max is sitting next to his Interceptor.  
  
"Here," she says, pressing the thing into Max's hand. "Help me out. It's impossible to get the back myself."  
  
Max looks the device over as if he has no idea what to do with it. He squeezes the handles a couple of times, scrunches up his forehead, then considers Furiosa for a moment as she sits down cross-legged in front of him, a blanket wrapped around her up to her neck.  
  
"Haircut?" He finally puts it together.  
  
"Yeah, it's too much." She motions vaguely at her head, then pulls the blanket around her tighter.  
  
He fiddles with the clipper another moment, then reaches out to her. He puts a hand on her shoulder carefully, as if making sure touch is okay. When she doesn't react, he carefully places the clippers at the back of her neck, below her hairline, and begins to clip the hair away.  
  
He nudges her head carefully, silently asking her to tilt it this way and that as he works his way through her short hair, clipping it to a soft fuzz. He goes over it a couple times, catching parts that got cut a little longer than the rest, trying to make it all the nice even cut he always sees her with. He brushes the clipped hair off her head and ears and neck, then sits back with a soft grunt.  
  
"Thanks." Furiosa reaches up and brushes the rest of the hair away, then throws off the blanket, letting the clipped hair fall into the sand. She turns to face him. Max himself has gotten pretty scruffy lately. She takes the clippers from him and waves them back and forth. "Your turn."  
  
Max looks surprised, but runs his hand over his hair and gives a quiet grunt. He's fine doing it himself with a knife, and in fact has been keeping his beard mostly at bay, but Furiosa is looking at him expectantly, so he grunts again, in assent.  
  
"Go rinse it out. There's some water over there." She points him to the bowl she had used.  
  
Max goes over and drops to his knees, wetting his face and his head and scrubbing at the dirty hair. He comes back dripping wet, and she offers him a damp blanket and waits for him to dry off and sit in front of her. She drapes the other over his shoulders as he does, and he pulls it around himself.  
  
She shears the back and sides short while leaving the top a little longer, threading her fingers through his hair and cutting along the backs of them. She's not the best at this, and it's hard to cut hair longer with clippers like these, but considering how he usually came out looking after he'd done it himself back at the Citadel, she decides she's not doing too badly. It's slow going, but he sits patiently, not seeming to mind.  
  
She leaves it a bit messy - it suits him.  
  
She moves in front of him and tilts his head up to clip the scruff of his beard. He tenses when the clipper touches his neck, fighting to keep himself from jumping up, his arm twitching to block her. Furiosa knows he trusts her, but there's still an element of wild animal about him. After so many years, the instinctive response to a potential threat cannot be washed away.  
  
She pulls the clipper away, waits until he relaxes, then tries again. He sits still this time, his eyes closed, and she clips the hair away in swaths, close to his skin but ever-present. She doubts he'd let anyone but himself put razor near his face anyway.  
  
She smiles when she's done, but turns away before he opens his eyes, busying herself with cleaning the hair out of the clipper.  
  
"Thanks," he grunts, barely a word, and runs his hand back and forth over the back of his head. He gets up to go shake the cuttings out of the blanket, folding it as he comes back.  
  
They sit down side-by-side, both cleanly cut, in comfortable silence as the sun climbs slowly higher.


	16. Lost

It figures that one of the few times they're actually trying to get someplace, they get lost. They both lean over Max's little map, spread out on the Interceptor's hood, and try to figure out where they went wrong. (Or Max does. Furiosa is still trying to figure out how to read the damn thing.)  
  
“Two days ago. We were here." He points to a spot on the map, then pauses, tilting his head back and forth slightly, trying to judge distance and time. "Could have made it this far." He now traces a small circle around the point where his finger had been, indicating the area they are likely in. There's not a whole lot of detail in that particular portion of the map. In fact, there's a hole through a large part of the area.  
  
"You need a new map," Furiosa comments bluntly.  
  
The corners of Max's mouth turn down as he stares at the ragged little thing. His shoulders hitch up slightly, perhaps the approximation of a shrug.  
  
"Okay, what's this?" She points to a set of zig-zagged lines near the Citadel. It's not relevant to their current predicament, but she figures she can be of more help if she can understand what his various symbols indicate.  
  
"Mountains."  
  
"…There are no mountains over there."  
  
"No, they're… Uh." Max looks around him, even though they're nowhere near the area they're talking about.  
  
She shakes her head and points to several more symbols and shapes in succession.  
  
"Fort. Canyon. Oasis. Bad place. Road," Max answers to each one. Furiosa considers what she's learned, looks around at their surroundings, then back at the map.  
  
Well, unless he completely missed some landmarks on his map (or has more where they’re not supposed to be)… "I think we're here." She places her finger right in the middle of the missing section of map.  
  
Max considers it, nods, then traces his finger from where they were a couple days ago to where Furiosa thinks they are now. "North-east." He pulls a small compass from a pocket and taps it a few times to unstick the needle. “South should get us there.”  
  
He folds the map carefully and tucks it away in a pocket. Furiosa can’t help but glance back over at him as they both climb into their vehicles. He’s nervous.  
  
They head south, Furiosa following Max doubtfully, and they drive for an uneventful day. When they decide to stop for the night, Max admits that he still doesn’t know where they are. He siphons some guzzoline out of the storage drums in Furiosa’s truck into his own tanks, then sits down to consult his map again.  
  
Furiosa watches him hunch over the little cloth on his knees, studying it intently. She gives a small huff. “We’ve got enough for a little while,” she says quietly. “I’m sure we’ll come across something. I wouldn’t worry too much.”  
  
Max hums. “Just… Don’t want to run into something… bad.”  
  
Furiosa nods, remembering the cannibal tribe. He must still be blaming himself for that. “Do you know of anything like that in the area?”  
  
“Maybe one tribe. Not very friendly,” He responds, still not looking up from the map. “Should be north of us, but I’m not sure.”  
  
Furiosa hums and stands up to refill her mug with water. He’ll figure it out or he won’t. She’ll leave him to his determination. They’ve managed to survive fine this long. She doesn’t want to end up in a sticky situation any more than he does, but is confident that they’re capable of getting themselves out of all but the worst.  
  
Sand shifts down a nearby dune, and both turn instantly, hands going to their guns. Max immediately lets go of his again. A large monitor lizard crosses the dune slowly, sending small cascades of sand flowing from its footsteps as it moves. Max is up in a second and dashes after it, leaving his map forgotten behind him.  
  
It startles and runs, but Max is already close, and tackles the monitor, throwing the whole of his weight on top of it. It's less than half his size, but it puts up a good fight, thrashing and trying to turn on him as he pins it down, hands clasped behind its head. Furiosa approaches calmly, pulling a knife from her belt. She stands near Max as he struggles, almost as desperate and animalistic as he was when they first met. There's an easier way to go about this, but she'll let him do his thing if he wants. It's amusing if nothing else.  
  
Max finally snaps the beast's neck, and hauls himself up, holding his prize. He eyes the knife Furiosa holds casually in her hand. "Wastes too much blood, killing it that way." Every bit is precious out here. He walks past her, back toward their little camp.  
  
They eat well that night. Max butchers the thing expertly, collecting the blood before cutting the meat away from the bone, wasting nothing.  
  
"It's not a steak dinner, but..." Max starts as he skewers slices of meat on what used to be a sturdy dipstick, and holds it over the fire.   
  
Furiosa interrupts him, mildly confused. "Not a what?"  
  
Max looks startled, like he doesn't quite know where that had come from. "Not… Uh." He shakes his head, leaves it unexplained.  
  
The meat that remains after their meal they smoke over the fire, then hang in the back of Aegis to dry. Furiosa sits back down next to Max and looks out over the dark horizon.  
  
It never occurred to her to ask about what his life was like before. She’s not sure before what, exactly, but it seems like this world isn’t the only life he’s ever known.  
  
To her, there wasn't any Before. Not in this lifetime. She's only ever known the time after the Fall. But Max knows. Sometimes he lets things slip, mentions of things Furiosa had only ever read about in books. Restaurants. Ice cream. Paved streets lined up in a grid.  
  
She finally decides to pry. In the past, she's usually taken a stance of _if he wants me to know, he'll tell me_ , but has since come to realize that Max volunteers virtually no information on his own, even now, after years of knowing each other. She decides to settle on more of a _if he doesn't want to tell me, he won't_ stance.  
  
"How old are you?" She has a hard time imagining that he would be old enough to have lived in the Before Time, but she wonders how he knows about the things he sometimes mentions. It doesn’t seem possible.  
  
Max is silent for a long time, looking at the ground instead of her. She can't tell if he doesn't remember, or if he just doesn't want to answer.  
  
"Old," he finally settles on, and that's all he'll say.  
  


 

* * *

  
  
He must spot a landmark the following day because he swerves west suddenly, and Furiosa turns hard to follow him. It’s not long before a veritable city appears in the distance.  
  
It’s walled, but the gates are open, and Max seems to know his way around inside with only minor hesitations. She’s surprised he drove inside; usually they hide their vehicles somewhere outside of the town for safety, but he leads her to another walled area inside the city where he stops at a guard booth. Furiosa gets out as Max does and joins him at the booth, where he quietly negotiates for entrance. They hand over a small amount of their fresh monitor jerky and are given tokens with numbers scratched into them in return. The guard jots some notes in a ledger on the rickety counter in front of him, and waves them on. Inside, they park among an array of other vehicles, some simple and unmodified, some obviously belonging to road warriors and outfitted as the lifestyle often requires.  
  
Max waves his token to Furiosa as he gets out of his Interceptor, then pockets it. “It’s safe,” he assures her as she joins him. “Reasonably. They watch. Just don’t lose the chip.”  
  
Furiosa tucks hers away as well. “What’s the plan?”  
  
“Find work.”  
  
She was hoping for a little more than that, but smirks fondly and strides along beside him. They’ve got little left to trade, aside from possibly exchanging one type of food for another. Unless they want to go look for salvage (which Max has been a little gun-shy about lately) there’s not much else they can do to rebuild their supplies.  
  
They head to the center of the city, and Max steps up to a short, free-standing section of wall. It’s covered in signs made of just about anything people could scrounge up. Some are wood and look like they’ve been painted over and re-written a hundred times, some are chalked on, or scratched into the surface of the sign itself, and some are just paper glued up to the wall, or messages written directly on the wall. They all appear to be adverts for tasks needing to be done, stolen items needing to be found, people needing to be hunted or captured, and any number of other jobs. Some have payment listed under them, some do not.  
  
Furiosa scans over signs on one end of the wall while Max starts on the other end. With a slight grimace, she quickly passes over one that proclaims _CANNIBAL HUNT_ and reads through the others for a job that looks worthwhile and not potentially insane. Max steps slowly closer to her, his eyes darting from one sign to the next as he moves down the wall. Furiosa stops at one that says _manuel laber - digging_ , but passes it over as well. Sounds like a relatively safe and easy job, but she doesn’t want to see Max overworking his core muscles just yet - he’s still recovering from his surgery.  
  
“How about this?” Furiosa lifts the edge of a sign that says _Lost Person_ , and Max glances over at it.  
  
He looks a little regretful. “Might be a good cause, but most of the time you never find ‘em.”  
  
Furiosa looks back at it as Max moves on to other postings. She wonders how many times he's tried jobs like this before he finally lost hope. For their own sake, a job that’s likely to pan out would be better, but she’s not going to forget this one. Maybe they’ll come back to it. She lets go of the sign and looks over at the next.  
  
Max grunts, and she looks over to see him tilting a sign toward her. “Pays well,” he says.  
  
The sign simply reads _TRANSPORT_ in barely-legible handwriting. Underneath, smaller, it says _guzz paid back double, food to spare_.  
  
“Vague,” Furiosa comments.  
  
Max hums in agreement. “But you’ve got the truck and the space. Could probably handle anything.”  
  
She gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Let’s try it.” She has to admit, as far as jobs go, it’s right up her alley.


	17. Work

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry I haven’t updated this in so long. I got completely stuck, and honestly a little bored with it, but I never stopped wanting to be able to complete it. Thanks so much to Tyellas for helping me push through and giving me some ideas that not only got me going again, but helped give me a grip on where this is going and where it will eventually end.

They follow the (somewhat badly mapped) directions on the back of the sign to a little establishment called The Dune Diner. It’s not much more than a purveyor of food items with a few hobbled-together tables out front, but it’s quaint, in its own way.  
  
“Lookin’ for Strom,” Max says to the man in the stall, hoping he correctly read the name scrawled on the back of the sign.  
  
“Who’s asking?”  
  
“We have an armored truck and an interest in work.”  
  
“Huh,” the man says, almost like he’s surprised, but he turns and yells toward the back of the stall. “Strom! Got friends lookin’ for ya!” He waves Max and Furiosa aside, out of the way of his stall (and his presently non-existent customers), and they step aside with raised brows.  
  
A man emerges a couple minutes later, pulling off an apron covered in stains that may or may not be blood, making Max’s brow crumple impressively, and he looks the two of them over.  
  
“Transport job?” the man asks, squinting a bit, then as an afterthought, holds out a hand vaguely between the two of them, “I’m Strom.”  
  
Max ignores his offered hand, so Furiosa takes it and shakes it briefly. “Furiosa. This is Max.”  
  
“Let’s discuss this elsewhere.” Strom waves them back the way he came, and Max hesitates, a little concerned after seeing his apron. He leads them out behind the business, however, and leans against the back wall. “What are your credentials?”  
  
The two road warriors look at each other.  
  
“Been on the road for years,” Max says. “Still alive.” If that wasn’t enough he wasn’t sure what was.  
  
“Used to do trade runs for the Citadel,” Furiosa puts in, having no idea if they’re close enough to the Citadel for knowledge of it to have spread this far. “Fought my fair share of raiders who wanted my cargo. Never lost a shipment.”  
  
The man scrutinizes the two of them, then pulls up his shoulders, his expression relaxing. “Good as any,” he decides. “What are you hauling with?”  
  
“Large flatbed, armored and protected,” Furiosa responds.  
  
“Got room for me and 9 crates, about yea by yea?” Strom asks, outlining the size of the crates with his hands.  
  
“Easy,” furiosa says cooly.  
  
“We’ve got two vehicles,” Max says.  
  
“Do it with just the truck,” the man responds firmly.  
  
“How bad’s this stuff need protecting?” Max’s posture change is subtle, but Furiosa reads it as a bit of a challenge. He knows how this works.  
  
Strom doesn’t answer, but both can tell by the way his mouth tightens what the answer is.  
  
“Two vehicles,” Max says again.  
  
Strom concedes. “Fine.”  
  
“And what’s the cargo?” Furiosa speaks up.  
  
“You ask a lot of questions…” Their prospective client grumbles.  
  
“If I don’t know what it is, it doesn’t go into my truck.”  
  
“Fair enough,” he groans. “It’s a mixed bag. Mostly scrap metal. One crate of salvaged medical supplies…” He pauses briefly. “One box of explosives. If you ask where I got all this, you’re out of a job.”  
  
Max and Furiosa look at each other, but wordlessly agree not to press further.  
  
“Fine,” Furiosa says. “We’re in.”  
  
“Great. Meet me at the south gate of town in an hour.”  
  


* * *

  
It’s too easy.  
  
They load the cargo, set off with Strom in Furiosa’s truck and Max driving beside her, and in half a day, they’re there. No altercations, no attacks, no traps, nothing.  
  
Strom meets with his contact and takes care of his deal in town, then loads up the truck with his new cargo (including a small herd of goats that Furiosa worries might not enjoy the ride back if they get into a fight) and they head back.  
  
On the way back, they’re approached by other vehicles, and not friendly looking ones. They only seem to make a quick assessment before they dodge away from Furiosa’s side swipe and Max’s aimed gun and drop off behind them. Their cargo apparently doesn’t look enticing enough to be worth the risk.  
  
Back at the town, Strom grumbles as he calculates their payment. “Shouldn’t have let you bring the car.”  
  
Max tenses briefly, his hand starting to clench.  
  
“But fair’s fair,” he continues with a sigh, and he counts out canisters of guzzoline as his partner at the diner wraps the promised payment of extra food in old newspapers and hands the packets over to Furiosa.  
  
Before they know it, they find themselves wandering back through town after moving the supplies into Aegis and parking the cars in the walled lot again, entirely unsatisfied by the challenges of their last job.  
  
Not that either of them is complaining for having had an easy job. Far from it, but with a shared look, they can both tell the other was expecting a little more adventure than that, even if they won’t say it.  
  
They pass by the wall with the signs again, and Furiosa pauses at it. The sign for the missing person is still there.  
  
“I want to take this job,” she tells Max.  
  
Max backtracks and reads the sign again. He hums. “If it’s not months old,” he concedes, “we can try.”  
  
There’s no information on where to find the contact for the job, only a name, but they’re surprised to find that asking around for that name gets them where they need to go within the hour.  
  
“Cherish?” Furiosa asks as the beaten-up door to the small house they were directed to opens up.  
  
“Yes?” A girl barely half Furiosa’s age peers at them through the doorway.  
  
“You posted a sign about a missing person?”  
  
Cherish’s eyes light up with a spark of hope. “Are you here to take the job?”  
  
Furiosa nods. “We’d like to try.”  
  
Cherish quickly steps back, motioning inside. “Please, come in!”  
  
They step in slowly and both pause as their eyes adjust to the much dimmer light inside. Furiosa wouldn’t say Cherish looks wealthy, but it looks like she lives pretty comfortably by wasteland standards. The house is solidly built, the furnishings inside aren’t in great shape, but there are in fact furnishings. Over an old wood-burning stove in the corner something is cooking in a pot, and it smells delicious.  
  
Cherish pulls a couple chairs up to a low table. “Sit, make yourselves comfortable.”  
  
“Who is it who’s missing?” Furiosa asks, getting straight to business before Cherish even has a chance to seat herself on a low stool by the table.  
  
“My gran,” Cherish answers. “She went to the market two days ago and never came back. I asked everybody I could, and some saw her, but nobody knows where she went.”  
  
“Did anybody have anything against her?”  
  
Cherish shakes her head. “I can’t imagine who would have, she’s harmless and does nothing but good for this town.”  
  
“What does she do?”  
  
“She’s… somewhat of a fortune teller. People always say she helps them a lot.”  
  
Max hums thoughtfully. “She good?”  
  
“She knows things she shouldn’t… Sometimes she can see something before it happens.”  
  
“And she’s well known?” Max says, guessing from how easy it was to find Cherish.  
  
Cherish nods. “Most people in town know of her.”  
  
“Somebody could have wanted those skills,” Furiosa murmurs to Max.  
  
Cherish looks shocked. “But who would kidnap an old lady?”  
  
“Plenty of people,” Max says grimly. This town is a fairly safe place, protected by laws and inhabited by some of the more civilized people he’s met on his travels, but when it comes to outsiders, Max knows well that morals often get thrown out quickly.  
  
“It’s a possibility,” Furiosa says. “Could she have wandered off somewhere herself?”  
  
“Maybe,” Cherish admits. “Her mind’s not what it used to be, but I don’t know where she—“ She pauses, then starts again hesitantly. “She had a dream the night before. She was talking about some… some kind of green place.”  
  
Furiosa gives Max a look with raised brows. Max crumples his forehead.  
  
“She said there were plants everywhere…crops, fruit trees, everything a person could need. I didn’t think much of it because it was just a dream, but very rarely she does have sort of… prophetic dreams. We have enough water for a few farms around here, but nothing like she was talking about. I don’t know if such a place even exists.”  
  
“We… might know of a place,” Furiosa says carefully. She turns to Max. “How far are we?” Truth be told, she hasn’t known where they were since the fifth day.  
  
Max hums but doesn’t even bother digging for his map. “We’ve looped around a bit… Never gone from here to there direct, but… Maybe a week. A dream’s not much to go on, though.”  
  
Furiosa shakes her head. “No, but it might help if she hasn’t been kidnapped.”  
  
“She’d never make it without a ride, if she even knew where to go,” Max adds.  
  
“I think,” Cherish says hesitantly. “If it was a prophetic dream… She’d know.”  
  
Max gives another hum.  
  
Furiosa leans forward. “How will we know her if we find her?”  
  
“Her name’s Dilara. She’s old, but only a little hunched,” Cherish answers. “Her hair’s gone white and she usually keeps it in a bun. When she left she was wearing a faded blue dress.” She smiles slightly and adds quietly, “I made it for her from some fabric I found…”   
  
Max nods. “And…” He almost hesitates. The question feels indelicate considering the situation, but it’s most of the reason that he, at least, is here. “What can you pay?”  
  
“I’d pay anything for the return of my gran,” she blurts out, then covers her mouth, realizing that probably wasn’t the smart thing to say to the average wastelander. “I mean…”  
  
“We won’t ask to bleed you dry,” Furiosa assures her.  
  
Cherish relaxes a bit. “I have enough food and water stored away to keep Gran and I going for maybe fifty days. I’ll give you three quarters of it, if you could please just bring my gran back. She means everything to me.”  
  
Max’s brows rise and he looks to Furiosa, who looks equally impressed. Fortune telling must pay well in this town.  
  
“Deal,” he says

**Author's Note:**

> [Consonance in gif form!](http://prettiestcaptain.tumblr.com/post/135971223674)


End file.
